So now that I’ve cut down all the vines that were killing the tree in our front yard, the tree looks really nice and is now a good climbing tree. The boys are up there quite frequently. I took a rope and put some knots in it and tied it to one of the branches so that it hung down against the trunk to help them climb up to the lower branches. It still can be kind of hard, so I took the rest of that rope (which was longer) and tied some loops along it so there were places to put hands or feet while climbing.

It’s not very easy to tie loops in a rope and have them stay when you pull on the ends. So I googled for loops and knots and found this:

It’s called a Butterfly Knot (or a Lineman’s Loop). It’s pretty firm and holds well even when the ends are pulled. What’s really cool about it is that you can do it even with both ends of the rope connected to something (as you can see by the pictures).

So there you go. A solid loop knot that can hold weight and is easy to tie. Now you know.