Daisy chain, lineman’s coil, chain sinnet. A few different terms that mean the same thing: to do a little crocheting on your climbing rope to help it stay tangle-free in your pack. 

Daisy chaining your rope can be especially helpful when using a long length of tangle-prone skinny rope, such as like the Petzl PURline or RADline, or a rappel pull cord. The photo above shows a 30 meter RADline.

(It also works great to bundle up long electrical extension cords, which is where I first learned this trick doing construction way back when.)

If the rope is inside your pack, a daisy chain lets it smoosh it around and better fit the contours of your backpack and other gear, as opposed to a butterfly coil. If you’re carrying your rope draped over the top of the pack, then a butterfly coil is probably a better choice.

And, even if you don't have a skinny rope to deal with, it's still a fun rope trick to play around with and practice, so get out your cordelette and give it a try!

How to make a daisy chain

I like to start at the middle of the rope. (Your rope DOES have a middle mark, right?) Make a girth hitch, reach one hand through the loop you made, and grab two strands of the rope. Pull these two strands through the girth hitch loop, forming a second loop. Reach through that loop, grab two strands, and repeat. (Congrats, you just learned to crochet.)

When you’re done, the rope will be in a series of what looks like chain links. In link, you’ll see six strands of rope. So, the daisy chain effectively shortens your rope by a factor of six. That means your 60 meter climbing rope is now a much more manageable 10 meters long. You can take a daisy chained rope and stuff/smash/smoosh it around all you want, and it’s never going to get tangled up.

To deploy the rope, find the ends of the rope and pull on them. The entire daisy chain should magically unravel itself, and you should be left with a nicely flaked rope with both ends on top. 

(Another good approach for managing a long length of skinny rope is a rope bag. It doesn’t need to be fancy, a reusable plastic grocery bag with sturdy handles works fine, packs down very small, and weighs just 2+ ounces / 60ish grams.)

Like most everything to do with knots, it’s a better show then a tell. Check out the video below to see how it’s done.