The perfect figure-8
While an undressed figure-8 follow-through will catch you just fine and an excessively long tail isn’t the end of the world, I make my figure-8 perfect every time I tie in. It’s not as hard as you think.
First off, if you’re not initially retracing your knot with the “start hard, finish easy” method, you should. This method makes it easier to identify a correctly tied knot as well as making it easier to untie after you whip.
Once you get there, you might be faced with a few problems: either the tail is too long/short, or your loop is too big/small. You might be tempted to start from scratch or tie a bonus knot to deal with excess tail, but all of these issues can be easily addressed with the following mnemonic:
Top is tail, bottom is belayer
The strand coming out of the top of your tie-in loop connects to your tail and the bottom goes to your belayer. Of course, this is all assuming you’re threading your bottom tie-in point first and your top tie-in point second, which I find most people tend to do. If you want to get in the weeds, there is a small case to be made for threading from top to bottom (think swami belts). Instead of untying and trying again, you can quickly adjust the knot you already have to get:
tail is too short -> push from top
6-8” of tail, loop same size as belay loop
Tail too short? Simply push the top strand into the knot and shuffle the slack around until you end at the tail.
Loop too big? Push the bottom strand, shuffle until the slack ends up on the rope between you and your belayer
Loop too small? Push from the main part of the rope, shuffle until you’re at the loop
Tail too long? Push the tail into the knot, feed it to the loop, push from the bottom of your loop until the belayer’s end of the rope
There’s no reason you shouldn’t have a perfect figure-8 every time you tie in.
If you continually struggle with getting the appropriate amount of tail and correct size loop, first adjust your knot to get it right. After that, untie the retrace and remove the rope from your harness, but keep the figure-8 in the rope. Measure this distance against some point of your body so you have a reference for how far it should be from the end of the rope. Try to tie it from scratch and match that length, adjust as needed.
Why bother?
Like I said at the top, a messy figure-8 works will hold you, so why should you care about having a perfect figure-8? Besides the ease of identification and untying, a perfect figure-8 means you’re less likely to get something accidently clipped through your tie-in loop or around your bonus knot. Perhaps more importantly, a perfect figure-8 is a symbol of the dedication to your craft. If you bothered to perfect this aspect of your climbing, you’re likely the kind of person who strives for excellence in other facets of climbing. So, do you want your figure-8 to be perfect?
