What’s a “closed” rope system?
You may have heard the term “closed rope system” in various books and websites. However, I’ve rarely seen it clearly defined, so let's talk about it.
A “closed rope system” means that both ends of the rope have a knot of some kind in them. It’s best practice to make this the default system for pretty much every climbing situation.
The closed rope system can take many forms. Here are a few:
A stopper knot in the free end(s) on a rappel or when top rope belaying
The end of the rope clipped or tied to a pack, rope bag or similar. This is helpful for single pitch top roping. If you start pulling the other end of the rope, you’ll immediately notice the other end is clipped to a pack. This avoids the extremely common problem of pulling the stopper knot up the route out of reach, whoops! If you use a clove hitch, once you shake out the knot, the rope is free to pull. See above photo.
Your retraced figure 8 tied directly to your harness
The rope ends clipped to the anchor, as you might do with the “J loop” technique on a multi pitch rappel
This is a simple habit that can prevent the end of the rope from ever going through a belay or rappel device, two common causes of climbing accidents.
Think of closing your rope system with knots the same as wearing a seatbelt when driving. Most of the time you're never going to need it, but that one time you do, you're going to be damn glad you had it.
And, it's worth mentioning again, pretty much always close the system when rappelling. (The exception to this can be a one pitch rappel and you can clearly see the ends of the rope or on the ground.)
Comments . . .
Some people object to tying knots in the rappel strands, saying they “don't want the knot to get stuck”. I’ve never understood this. Unless you have some very unusual deep rope eating cracks right below you, the first person down should easily be able to pull the knot out of whatever crack it might be in, and toss it on down the cliff. A basic rule of rappelling is to never descend past any rope that is hung up; the job of the first person down is to de-cluster any problems and toss the rope down and cleanly.
If it's a crazy windy day and you're worried about getting your knotted rope stuck in some far-off rock crevice, you have some options. You can lower your partner with both ends of the rope, or the first person can saddlebag the rope.
Think of it this way: how many people have died from a knotted rope end getting stuck? Compare that to, how many people have died from rappelling off the end of the ropes?
Do you have a rope that's “long enough”? Don't be complacent. Say you’re climbing a 25 meter route and you have a 60 meter rope. No problem, you think, I have an extra 10 meters of rope. But, if your belayer backs up from the wall or walks downhill, you might suddenly end up short when lowering off. Having a knot in the end of the rope, or having the belayer tied to it, eliminates this potential accident. Always close the system, even if you're doing single pitch sport climbing and initially appears you have plenty of rope to lower off your partner.
When your rappel ends on the ground, have the first person down untie the stopper knots. You’re on the ground, so obviously they’re no longer needed, and they need to be untied to pull the rope. So, get into the habit of having the first person do this. This helps prevent that all-too-common mistake of starting to pull the rappel rope with a knot still in one end, yikes!
For a rappel, consider tying your stopper knot at least 2 feet from the end of the rope. By doing this, you give yourself enough extra rope to at least tie an overhand. This gives you something to clip your tether to, in case you screw up and reach the knot. If you don't do this, yes, you did prevent the catastrophe of rapping off the end of your rope, but now you might be kind of screwed, because you maybe can't do much else.
Think you’d never make a mistake like this? If it can happen to Alex Honnold, it can darn sure happen to you.
In 2016, Alex was dropped by his belayer because they were using a 60 meter rope on a 70 meter route, there was no knot in the end of the rope, and his belayer was not tied to the end of the rope. Whoops, open rope system. While the belayer was lowering Alex, the end of the rope zinged through their Grigri and Alex fell onto some “gnarly rocks”. Luckily he only suffered mild injuries. Other climbers in the same situation have died.