One of the rescue guys i hike with has one of these, its a industry approved way of terminating a rope, for attachment to a harness or rigging plate anchor.

knotless, spliceless, no modification to the rope is required. You need a locking biner to attach it to your saddle or anchor point

# Provides a quick reusable termination and eliminates the need for knots and factory terminations

# Complies with OSHA and ANSI standards

for kernmantle, 3 strand or doublbraid....unfortunalty its sized for 5/8" rope but i wonder if they would consider making thses for 12/16 strand ropes, 1/2" size?








closeup of rigging diagram:



EDIT:

found a termination plate for 7/16 - 1/2" ropes : http://www.patrollersupply.com/equipment/item_1136.asp

instructions: http://www.miomechanical.com/prod_img/l/plate_lg2.gif

well the above device got my brain churning.... so i took my Petzl Paw rigging plate, threaded my arborplex thru, secured the end and hung suspended from the roof, just above ground. No slippage, you get a very secure "termination". i then extended the tail end out anohter 4', reterminated it in the rigging palte, tied a inline figure 8 then a blakes with the tail. A ncie neat, clean tidy setup , with zero slippage, even with two of us bouncing hard on it. The termination releases easily after being loaded, (only if you want to release it, requires undoing the blakes and then unthreading the rope thru the plate. plate).

PICS this afternoon.....i think some of you might like this setup.

Front view:

View from saddle:



the way i threaded the rope thru above is a bit different than the conventional way of using a rope plate, but it works very well. I also threaded the rope thru the standard way, its a lot cleaner looking and works the same. Pics tonight when i get the camera again...

here is the second version, threaded like the Rope plate in the first post:



alot cleaner setup, and very secure (no slippage at all.

and if you look at the second setup carefully, perhaps you will spot the hidden way of double and triple crotching, using the petzl paw rigging plate, and the side D rings...

DEFINITELY some pics of that setup soon!! I'll take em outdoors in a tree fo clarity.

What's the advantage of using that thing? I know a fig 8 on a bight in 5/8ths rope would be a bit bulky....but geeze, that thing is hardly compact.

love
nick

That termination makes kind of hard to re-attach the rope when you are on the tree and want to move to a new location up or sideways etc. Similar to what you would do in a split tail system. If all you do is go up and then down on the same location this probably works fine.