Amherst College Outing Club – Knot Tying and Night Programs

Posted on May 17, 2018 by AIAO

For a while now we’ve been running short night-programs at Amherst College, consulting with the outing club as their advisors. We go to Amherst College and give them evening workshops four times a semester. These workshops involve outdoor skillsets that include: tarp construction/craft, hanging food to protect it from bears, knot tying, winter camping and adverse weather preparedness. During these workshops we aim to empower students to endeavor to adventure more safely and with more knowledge and self efficacy.

Recently, Farlin ran a knot tying workshop for the students. In a previous workshop where they had focused on tarp-craft and overall camp-craft, some students came to him saying that they felt deficient in their repertoire of knots – so they requested a workshop focusing on that.

This was an Indoor session, with ACOC members sitting around a table and practicing their knot tying skills together. They wen’t over clove hitches, bowlines, taught-line hitches, and truckers hitches. Farlin talked to them about the different uses and versitility of these knots, as well as their limitations.

Below you can see Farlin teaching one of the methods for tying a bowline knot, and some pictures of him tying a clove hitch around his finger.