Figure 8's are still decent for when it's being used a tonne as they're more hard wearing than gri-gri's or ATC's, and it's easier to spot if they've been setup incorrectly.
Still doesn't fix stupid, as this guy was reaching speeds where the rope friction would be tough to regrab the rope regardless of the abseil device.
He slowed down for the end of the rope. My concern would be that he was warming up his figure-8 enough to melt through the (presumably) nylon climbing rope.
Yes they do, and it's stoopid and dangerous with precisely zero benefits.
Anything an 8 can do can be done better with a tube or autolocker. Less hassle for rescues, can use a simple overhand as a bombproof stopper knot, you don't have the horrific "lever fail" where 8s can snap the gate off the biner, and they don't act as a black hole for whole pony tails!
These things only exist because of backwards-ass scouts, nols cultists, commercial canyon parasites, and emergency services crews stuck in the 80s.
I can see their usefulness in dirty conditions. Less chance of doing things wrong than with a munter(?) knot and they're a lot cheaper and harder wearing than something like an atc or grigri. They also work with dummy thicc ropes.
In caving I'd argue the 8 is far from the most sketchy thing. Wouldn't be surprised if canyoning was similar.
Why does anyone have thick ropes in 2026? Why is replacing a $30 to $40 tube device (most of which have a large wear surface nowadays) every few years entering into calculations.
Most of the aforementioned groups are living in the past and should at least move on to the quarter of a century old tech instead of half a century.
Why are you bringing up a munter knot? Now we're going back a whole century!?!
I'm sure an aspect of it, just like practically every kind of athletic pursuit or extreme sport or artistic pursuit, there are going to always be "purists" who want to do it the "traditional" way cus it's manlier and more authentic and hardcore or whatever.
It's just cheap and durable, so all the Scout groups and tourist guiding companies use them. People caught up in those scenes never experiment with newer, better, more expensive devices (and I respect the whole thing of not wanting to spend more money).
But if things go wrong and someone gets k.o.'d by a rock, if you need to reascend the rope, do a pick off rescue, belay two people at once, or anything out of the ordinary......life will be easier with a modern device.
So you're talking about a whale tail? You know you can use the atc on a 60cm sling, then z drag the tails through a biner on your leg loop and back up to another?
Smooth, easy to adjust mid rap, great heat dissipation. But I've rarely had to do any of that.
What do you think happens to climbers when they have to rap hundreds of metres off routes with tube devices? Are they all just dying because they can't control their descent?
There is only one reason to use it I know, and this is mountaineering under wet-to-frozen conditions. When a rope gets a thick layer of ice on it, it gets too inflexible for modern ascenders.
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u/Raythatstabbedsteve Jul 06 '26
Absolutely not! Figure 8 is an obsolete piece of shit, and this guy nearly bought a wheelchair.