During an episode of "SOS-Survival" Creek Stewart had occasion to tie a rope around a tree to serve as an anchor for extracting a snowmobile from a stream. He used a timber hitch, stating that this was the strongest possible knot.

This is news to me. I have always favored either a bowline, including several of its variants, or the figure of eight, which tests out quite well in this application. I could find no data on strength of a timber hitch, but I doubt it would do as well as either the bowline or figure eight.

Strength is defined as the percentage of strength retained by the knotted rope, compared to the breaking strength of the unknotted line. A degradation of close to 50% is typical for most knots, with the bowline and figure eight testing at 75-80%.

Any thoughts? None of my anchors have failed yet....