One of my favourite things to do is to tie knots But like most people, I don't always learn them very easily. Someone will show me a knot, and I'll need to see it a 100 times, before I can do it on my own. That is unless there's a catchy, fun, simple mnemonic to help me! Since I'm on Everest for the next few weeks... I figured, I could teach you 5 of the most useful knots with an easy mnemonic, that will help you remember them quickly. So grab yourself a piece of rope... A piece of string, shoelace, some floss or heck even a piece of cooked spaghetti will do the trick. And let's get started... Alright so... Got some rope here. And the first one we gonna talk about is... The Figure 8, also known as the 'Flemish Knot'. My mother's Flemish so, I gotta say that. Basically, the Figure 8 you're gonna use, on a lot of situations. If you've ever gone rock climbing and you didn't know, how to do Figure 8... So it's a pretty secure knot, often used in climbing. So it's really fun one to remember too. The mnemonic goes like this... 'This is Charlie, give him a scarf, poke him in the face.' And what do I mean by that? Let's do a demonstration and I'll do a slower version of this as well. I can't get this undone. Alright this is Charlie... Give him a scarf, so wrap it around him. And then poke him in the face. There is your Figure 8. Simple as that. This is Charlie... Give him a scarf... Poke him in the face. Now this, conserve is a stopper if you want. But typically, what you'll do is... You give yourself quite a lot of slack here. Do that thing. Here is Charlie... Give him a scarf. poke him in the face. And then, what you'll do is... You'll take this loop and guide it through your harness, your belay will put whatever you guys have going on. And then you'll feed this... This end, back through the Figure 8. And what you'll get is basically Figure 8 on a bight. So you can do, a Figure 8 on a bight as well... If instead of just saying, this is Charlie... Grab a bight! This will be called a bight, and do the same thing. So we double a rope This is Charlie... Give him a scarf... And then poke him in the face. And there we go... You have a Figure 8 with a bight. And this you can clip in to a biner or wrap around something whatever. Uh... What you do wanna do that is make sure that it's well dressed. We're gonna go into that right now but... You wanted to look nice! It's often times that, when you do this knot... This can be kind of a mess, things are over each other in the wrong way. That's not very nice. So you wanna make sure it's well dressed but... As long as you get the basic mnemonic, about Charlie and the scarf poke him in the face. You're good to go. Alright, let me pause the video just for a moment to talk about the sponsor that is able to make this video possible. And that is atlasVPN. Let me tell you a little bit about them since we're talking about knots. 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Now, get this, we all hate tying our shoes. We always double-knot our shoes because they come undone with a crappy knot, right? Well that's because, the overhand you are doing, is wrong. If you do the overhand the other way, if you get yourself a reef knot, then actually, it stays a lot more secure. It's not the most secure knot in the world, but it will stay more secure if you do the reef knot instead of the over-hand knot. I'll show you what I mean with the shoelaces in just a moment. So this knot isn't super reliable as I said before but it's good for quick little things like tying your shoes tying strings or a little bow on your gift wrapping. Also tying sealed covers, tent flies, things that are super quick. And that secure and safety isn't like of the upmost importance just something quick and reliable. It's a good knot for tying two ends of a rope or two separate ropes together. So think about shoelaces, you're putting them together. If you have two ends of the rope and you want them to get together, this is how it goes, here's the mnemonic. "Right over left, left over right, makes a reef knot, both tidy and tight." So you take your right one, put it over the left, and I have these two ends and then the left goes over the right and through... and voila This is what a reef knot looks like. And you can tell you have done it right 'cuz it looks tidy and tight. And that's pretty good. The more you pull on it, the more tightened it gets. Right over left, left over right makes a reef knot that's tidy and tight. Alright, this one's great and it's called the Alpine butterfly and this is used a lot in mountaineering when you got a rope and you want to kinda connect into the middle of the rope. So what you do? It's a butterfly knot. So what we are gonna think about is a butterfly. That's our mnemonic. You can imagine the pathway of this butterfly- goes across your hand towards your thumb and then goes wrapping around the front of your fingertips and guides back to where your thumb was. So you'll have this little bit across your fingertips and then this kind of X shape in the middle of your palm. And what you will do is you'll guide this loop think of the butterfly wing, underneath and up-through. Holy sh** That's a big fu*king ice-fall wow! So anyways, here, is your butterfly knot. You've taken a section of rope that might be tied to two ends and you've basically made a loop in the middle of it. Pretty secure. Won't budge much. And like I said, it's great for clipping end in this middle section of rope. So you are just guiding that butterfly around. so you lay it on your palm, guide it towards your thumb wrap it around the fingertips of the top have it cross over and you can have it lay on your thumb and make this cross, and then, loop it under.. both through.. and there.. And just pull on each end. You got your secure butterfly knot. Alright, our next knot is the bowline. Now, this is used a lot in sailing. It's a really good knot to tie around something like I'm wearing or a tent fly even. Pretty secure, under a load, it won't budge much but when there's no load, it's easy to undo. So the mnemonic goes like this: The rabbit comes out of the hole, goes around the tree and back down into the hole. So you have your hanging end of your rope here, Make a hole, okay? Have the rabbit come up through the hole, around the tree, and then back down into the hole. And make sure to keep a little loop at the end here, tighten it and that's your bowline. So the rope that you are holding in your left hand is the tree. And you are gonna make a loop that sits on top of the tree. That's the hole, then the rabbit goes up through the hole. The tail end is the rabbit, goes around that tree and then back down into the hole or back through the loop that it came from. Then pull it tight. Alright, this last one is called a clove hitch and this is a nice little thing to attach to a stationary object as well. Basically how it goes, let's imagine you have some kind of pole. ..Ah this is my ice axe. But the way it works, mnemonic is, loop right around the pole, loop left around the pole, and then up through the hole. And then tighten it. Alright, so you loop right around the pole, then loop left around the pole on the top of that other loop you just did. And then, up through the hole. Right in between both of them and then, well, tight. And there is your clove hitch. Now, it's pretty secure. It will come undone if you pull too much on it but for a quick little hitch, something you wanna attach to, stationary object, this is great. Now, another version of this, it's little more fun to remember the mnemonic for. Um, as if say, you have like, a biner or something that you want to take this hitch and attach it to. It's one thing if you have the stationary pole in front, you can wrap around it. But what if you just want, let's say in the middle of a rope to do that. No problem. So, the mnemonic goes, Mickey ears in the back, (so fold it in the back) Mickey ears in the front, and then put the first ear over the first and then, there is your loop. Put your carabiner or whatever you are trying to attach it to. Oops... And there you go. There is your clove hitch on a biner. Nice. Mickey ears in the back, Mickey ears in the front Put the front ear over the second ear Pull tight. Alright guys, that's it for this video. Short and sweet. Hopefully something useful and I don't know, maybe there's some mnemonics you never heard of for those knots. Obviously with a bit of practice, you'll have them down But obviously you don't wanna be always saying the mnemonic when you do it but it's a good way to learn it. As it's everything. Mnemonics help to get it to your brain and then once you practice it, make it muscle memory, it's in there. You don't need to use a mnemonic. That's it. I'm exhausted. Just tying some knots here at 17500 feet. Ima go back to camp and lay down. Hope you enjoyed that one. See you in the next video. Please like, share, subscribe. All those things. Take it easy. I'm out.