1. It's very easy to visually check (five pairs of parallel lines) (by easy I don't just mean reliably, I also mean low effort, which is important because you do it a lot - point fingers at the pairs of parallel lines: "two four six eight ten"). It's very symmetric. If done wrong it tends to look radically different.
2. It requires pulling in 2 places in different directions to come undone. The bowline opens if you pull in 1 bad spot.
(3. In the gym, you can just leave the normal figure eight on the rope, which saves the next climber a bit of time. Not a lot, but it's a nice feature.)
1. It's very easy to visually check (five pairs of parallel lines) (by easy I don't just mean reliably, I also mean low effort, which is important because you do it a lot - point fingers at the pairs of parallel lines: "two four six eight ten"). It's very symmetric. If done wrong it tends to look radically different.
2. It requires pulling in 2 places in different directions to come undone. The bowline opens if you pull in 1 bad spot.
(3. In the gym, you can just leave the normal figure eight on the rope, which saves the next climber a bit of time. Not a lot, but it's a nice feature.)