PRUSIKS - ROPE KNOTS PART 4

The rope knot saga continues, as I once again look over the interesting names of the rope knots on http://www.proknot.com/html/rope_knots.html. (No, this truly isn't writer's block. I really am curious.) There was one called a "prusik." It makes a loop. You tie it around a tight line, then you can slide it up and down the line, but once you put something through the loop it "jams solidly." Sort of like the hangman's noose I was considering a few days ago, but different.

Wilkipedia says a prusik is "a friction hitch or knot used to put a loop of cord around a rope, applied in climbing, canyoneering, mountaineering, caving, rope rescue, and by arborists." All exciting sports except arboring. It's named for a mountaineer in Austria. I wonder how many spills it took to invent that knot!

The Prusik knot is used when rescuing crazy people that climb mountains, and it works kind of like a ratchet. But Wilkipedia says that even the Prusik doesn't work when the rope is frozen, so don't use a prusik when you climb a glacier. And if you should decide you want to put two prusiks on one rope, you can make handcuffs. That's to cuff the crazy person you just rescued.