Wellness
Know Your Tools: Rope
Lesson time 21:34 min
You can make almost anything with a simple rope. Jessie teaches you some basic knots you can use when you find yourself in a bind.
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Topics include: Knots • Improvise Rope • The Ins and Outs of a Survival Bracelet
Teaches Wilderness Survival
Wilderness survival expert and former Air Force SERE specialist Jessie Krebs teaches you the skills to explore nature safely and confidently.
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[MUSIC PLAYING] - So our second tool is line or rope, anything we can attach one thing to another, wrap things up. Line is awesome. So let's talk a little bit about the nomenclature of it, the different pieces and parts of a rope. And this makes it a lot easier to learn different types of knots. I call myself a knothead or a knot nerd. So knots are amazing to me. With just a simple piece of line, there's so much we can do with this thing. So I'm going to show you the pieces and parts first. Again, so we can learn those knots. So, one, the first thing is the end that I'm working with. It's doing all the running around, or all of the work. So this is an important part because it's what we're usually using the most. The middle part of the line is the body. It's kind of like our body. So you can think of the running end or the working end as sort of like your hands, the body as being like the rest of your body, And then we may have an end that's already attached to something. And this is a standing end. It's just standing around. At one point, it may have been the running end and was being used for something. Once it's attached, it's done its job. It's doing its work. Now, it's the standing end. We usually just ignored it from that point on, right? So some of the other nomenclature is if I take a bight of the running end, that's doing something just like this. So I just basically make a loop. You just already made something. Pretty cool, right? Grab a shoelace if you want to practice along. I can make a bight anywhere in the line. So instead of putting the end through sometimes, of something, I might put a bight through instead. I can also make overhand and underhand loops. So if I take a bight and simply roll it this direction, from your perspective, what's on top is the running end. It's an overhand loop. It's overhand because it's over the top, versus if I flip it around and put it underneath, now it's an underhand loop. So it's whatever that running end is doing. And I don't have to be flipping this around, though it's kind of mesmerizing. It's more just taking a bight and flipping it one direction or the other. When I do something like that, I have a little bit left over. So this is often called the tail. Kind of looks like a little animal with a little tail going on, right? And if I wrap that tail around the body once, and go back the direction it was just going, that's one turn of the rope. I've turned it around the line one time, Right so that's some of the nomenclature, the basics to get us started. [MUSIC PLAYING] So now let's look at a simple basic knot that we can use for a lot of different applications. So right now, I'm going to show very clearly, this is a standing end over there, right? This is loosey-goosey over here. And that's already attached to something. So if I want to make something called a slip loop-- a slip loop is where I take the end of this line, the running en...
About the Instructor
As a former Air Force SERE (survival, evasion, resistance, and escape) specialist, wilderness survival expert Jessie Krebs spent 30 years preparing people for the unexpected. Now she’s teaching you the mindset and skills to safely explore the outdoors. Learn essential survival techniques—from signaling for help to reading a map, finding water, making shelter, and more—and embark on your next adventure with confidence.
Featured MasterClass Instructor
Jessie Krebs
Wilderness survival expert and former Air Force SERE specialist Jessie Krebs teaches you the skills to explore nature safely and confidently.
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