Originally Posted by
qedcook
As a follow-up to recent discussions (and maybe this needs a different thread), I went canyoneering this weekend. I got to the first rappel of the canyon, and there was a larger group ahead of us. They were nice enough to let us use their rope to rappel so we could go ahead. I saw the clove hitch on a biner block and asked if I could tie a figure eight on the rope.
Before I said anything else, I thought to myself: "There's no point in mentioning that the clove hitch has some known weaknesses. People get so entrenched in what they learned from instructors when they very first started canyoneering that they never let go of it, even in the face of contrary evidence." But I decided to mention it anyway. I casually said that the clove hitch can slip if the knot moves to the curved part of the carabiner. I suggested looking up videos of how it slips. The response I received was: "I don't trust dubious YouTube videos for my canyoneering."
I wondered how my advice might have been received if I had said: "Tom Jones posted on his website recently the potential dangers of the clove hitch." (Sorry to pick on you, Tom.)
As I said recently on here, it's not just a question of whether one technique is "better" than another. It's a question of whether one technique is being promoted or pushed too much, so much so that it unintentionally becomes a standard. And then when that standard needs adjusting with new evidence, people are too entrenched in their ways to change.