# rappelling



## luckylogger (Oct 15, 2007)

whats the best way to rappell out of a tree? i normally put my rope around the tree, tie a bolend with a long tail to my belt, then tie a tautline hitch with the tail to the rope coming from my rope bag.
ive used this system for years. if you rapell fairly slow the rope doesn,t heat up. any better ideas?:monkey:


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## Canyonbc (Oct 15, 2007)

i use a friction saver...then have a split tail...but if its a log way...i have a figure 8 clipped on...they are easy to use and rappell right down


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## BobEMoto (Oct 17, 2007)

A munter hitch is another way: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Munter_hitch


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## Canyonbc (Oct 17, 2007)

Ya i have seen that..around

is it a smooth way to come down???


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## Old Monkey (Oct 17, 2007)

For a long rappel a figure eight is your best bet. Some say that that should be backed with a friction hitch or a prussik chord as a back up. I prefer a Blake's hitch to a tautline for a short descent. It doesn't tighten up like a tautline.


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## 2FatGuys (Oct 17, 2007)

I used to teach rock climbing adn rappelling to scouts and youth organizations about 20 years ago. We originally used "brake bars" on non-locking caribiners as the braking device. We changed over to figure eights when they became commonly available. When I moved over to tree climbing, I kept using the 8. I ALWAYS back it up with a friction knot of some sort, usually a Blake's Hitch. We never used backups like that on the rocks, but it sure makes good sense to have a second safety. I've never known anyone to zip to the ground after a failure when using both the 8 and a hitch. I violated my own safety rules once when working in a small tree. When rappelling down, I thought it was too short of a ride to bother adding the 8 to the setup. As I was backing down quickly, using just the Blake's Hitch and gaffs, I sank a gaff too deep into the tree to easily pull it out. But... the hitch continued to slip. I turned horizontal and the gaff puled out and I hit the ground flat on my back. Thankfully, it was a VERY short drop and I wasn't hurt. But it taught me to NEVER deviate from smart practice.


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## BobEMoto (Oct 18, 2007)

Canyonbc said:


> Ya i have seen that..around
> 
> is it a smooth way to come down???



It's smooth enough. I quit using the eight because I'm too lazy to carry it. I don't know how the thicker ropes react. I've got 11mm.


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## Canyonbc (Oct 19, 2007)

i have 1/2inch...so whats that 12mm


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## John Paul Sanborn (Oct 19, 2007)

I did a very long rappel, on an 8 once, w/o backup and I got a wee bit scared around 1/2 way through and still ~90ft to go.

If you do it with regularity, then an ID from Petzl would be a good tool.

When coming off a spar I will often use my pull rope to descend (bad climber, bad!) with a Munter. There is a lot of rope on rope friction, and you can see the fibers coming off


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## Chinooker (Oct 19, 2007)

As a mountaineer I generally use my belay device for raps, currently a black diamond ATC pro. I always back up my raps with either a mechanical device like a Petzl shunt or a tension knot like an autoblock. The climbing community has gotten away from figure 8 because repeated use under weight (raps) cause the ropes to baddy kink. 

Rapping off the end of the line is a too common occurance in the climbing world. Just last week a well respected climber went off the end of his line in the Dacks.

Stay safe.


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## 9th year rookie (Oct 19, 2007)

*8's are great*

but too much clutter on my belt.
I go slow w/existing friction hitch.


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## Tree Machine (Oct 20, 2007)

Chinooker said:


> As a mountaineer I generally use my belay device for raps, currently a black diamond ATC pro.


I need to call you on that. What is an ATC pro?

In trees, most of the time is spent controlling friction so you can position yourself precisely for cuts and/or rigging maneuvers, and schlepp tools around up there. Much of the time aloft is also not spent loading the device, but in passing rope back through it to advance it along with you (slack tending).


1/2 inch is 12.7mm, often referred to as 13 mm line.

13 mm does not lend itself to CURRENT devices because very few in the world outside tree climbers uses 1/2 inch line. Everyone uses 11mm, so devices are built and sized to 11 mm and historically have been that way.
That excludes most of us.

Also, since we have historically (almost religiously) used the friction hitch for our friction control, makers of friction devices have seen no profit motive in making friction pieces for the treeguy community.

Of the two notable 'Treeguy' devices, the Unicender and the Lockjack, those are both modeled to accomodate our 2:1 ascent/descent system. Neither does SRT, so you're limited. Neither goes 1:1 ascent or descent.

So we, as a population and as an industry, and now I'm _generally speaking_, we have just stuck with the friction hitch and a 2:1 system and tying lots of knots.

We are climbing in the dark ages. I don't know how else to say it. We climb in a unique sphere, mostly cut off from all other climbing disciplines.
Entry requirement into the tree climbing industry, learn to use a friction hitch and climb 2:1. :help:


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## Tree Machine (Oct 20, 2007)

I hope I don't sound insulting. It's not meant to be. It's just a general observation over the last dozen years in the industry and half decade on the climbing forum sites.

Tree Climbers make climbing harder than what it is, which can be hard to begin with.


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## 00chris85 (Oct 20, 2007)

hey tm can you explain what you mean by tree climbers make climbing harder...
i don't know any diff then trees..

also is it acceptable..to use rock climbing descenders? i personally don't like the 8 but a petzel descender is nice to use once and awhile.


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## John Paul Sanborn (Oct 20, 2007)

00chris85 said:


> also is it acceptable..to use rock climbing descenders? i personally don't like the 8 but a petzel descender is nice to use once and awhile.



It is OK to use any device that is;

load rated
rated for your rope diameter
man rated (ie it is rated for human suspention)
and you understand how it works


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## Jumper (Oct 20, 2007)

luckylogger said:


> whats the best way to rappell out of a tree?



Any way that gets you to the ground without broken bones, bruises or rope burns??? And gonads intact.

Doing it out of a Huey chopper was a real rush.


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## Tree Machine (Oct 21, 2007)

I wanna hear about the Huey Chopper.





00chris85 said:


> hey tm can you explain what you mean by tree climbers make climbing harder...
> i don't know any diff then trees..



All I mean is the difference between 2:1 and 1:1 systems, and precision friction control over struggling against it.


That's all, in a nutshell. 


John Paul got it all right, except didn't mention what the rated device should be capable of.


There are hundreds of rated devices, a mere handful that do 13 mm rope, a fraction of those that would go from 11 mm to 13 mm, fewer yet of those that are made specifically for the Arborist Industry and finally, a fraction of those devices that will do all of the above, plus allow you to descend 2:1 doubled, 1:1 doubled and 1:1 SRT, in that tiny pool of devices...., wait, I think the pool is empty.


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## John Paul Sanborn (Oct 21, 2007)

Jumper said:


> Doing it out of a Huey chopper was a real rush.



FAST rope and SPIE rig???


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## Tree Machine (Oct 22, 2007)

I've often wondered what the military uses for friction control.


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## Magnum783 (Oct 22, 2007)

Tree Machine said:


> I've often wondered what the military uses for friction control.



Your boots and gloves when you are fast roping. Not much control at all but you really don't want to hang around at all. When you go off on a single rope you use an eight.
Jared


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## Canyonbc (Oct 22, 2007)

Magnum783 said:


> Your boots and gloves when you are fast roping. Not much control at all but you really don't want to hang around at all. When you go off on a single rope you use an eight.
> Jared




How far are normally dropping out of a helicoptor?


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## John Paul Sanborn (Oct 22, 2007)

~50-100 ft depending on the unit training.

They do it with a full combat load too 

picture a 60mm rope, like a fire pole, that you hug for your life as you step out of the helo'.


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## Chinooker (Oct 23, 2007)

Tree Machine said:


> I need to call you on that. What is an ATC pro?



ATC Guide - your are correct sorry for the confusion. Thanks for the correction.


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## Canyonbc (Oct 23, 2007)

John Paul Sanborn said:


> ~50-100 ft depending on the unit training.
> 
> They do it with a full combat load too
> 
> picture a 60mm rope, like a fire pole, that you hug for your life as you step out of the helo'.




Whew..!!!

Crazy..that would be one heck of a ride...but i would imagine your adreline would be pumping so fast/hard that it wouldnt phase you


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## Magnum783 (Oct 23, 2007)

Canyonbc said:


> Whew..!!!
> 
> Crazy..that would be one heck of a ride...but i would imagine your adreline would be pumping so fast/hard that it wouldnt phase you



All I thought of is those bullets sound real and I don't think I can run while I am hanging on this rope lets get to the ground fast.
Jared


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## Canyonbc (Oct 23, 2007)

Wow...

Ya i think i would be right there with ya...definetly not going to get out of harms way hanging from a rope...

DO you still do it?


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## Magnum783 (Oct 23, 2007)

Canyonbc said:


> Wow...
> 
> Ya i think i would be right there with ya...definetly not going to get out of harms way hanging from a rope...
> 
> DO you still do it?



OH yeah, not stateside too much but ocationally when I am overseas. 
Jared


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## Canyonbc (Oct 23, 2007)

Whew...

Thats awesome...best of luck...and be safe.


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## OLD CHIPMONK (Oct 23, 2007)

Rapelled off a barstool once & quit; a long time ago !!!!!


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## John Paul Sanborn (Oct 23, 2007)

Magnum783 said:


> OH yeah, not stateside too much but ocationally when I am overseas.
> Jared



Do you SPIE rig in your unit??

How about the RECONDO Swiss ladder up to the Helo skid for extraction 

Most of my 8.5 years in the USMC was peacetime, so the sound of an FPF in the distace from a trainign range was like a lullaby. the M-16 bursts with the rip of a SAW, then the slower M-60's with the "em-duce" thud duhd duhd duhd acting as the base-line.


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## Tree Machine (Oct 24, 2007)

I can't remember the movie, but the bad dudes were perched above a cliff-lined highway. One of the bad dudes, in a car, would create an accident. Then the bad dudes from up above would come flying down the steep grade, running, face-first down the hill-cliff to do what bad dudes do. Each bad dude had a thin rope and a friction piece.

And this made me wonder, *what do the good dudes use?*

U.S Marine Corp, special ops, S.W.A.T. (and others).

Here are the most highly specialized, highly trained professionals on the planet. With the limitless funding to properly gear and outfit their troops with the most technologically advanced equipment that man can create, please John Paul Sanborn, please don't tell me the standard issue friction hardware is a _figure 8_.....


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## Tree Machine (Oct 24, 2007)

Chinooker's piece:


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## John Paul Sanborn (Oct 24, 2007)

Tree Machine said:


> please John Paul Sanborn, please don't tell me the standard issue friction hardware is a _figure 8_.....



I've been out of that loop since the early 90's, we had carabiners then.

The method of descent on the talus/scree you saw is called Australian rappel. I remember the movie too, it was South american narco terrorists doing a ransom kidnapping.

That is what it was designed for, one hand for break, one hand for your rifle. Many thrill seekers use it for a vertical rapp, I cannot see the reasoning


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## Magnum783 (Oct 24, 2007)

JPS I am not sure what you meant SPIE I am in the AF so our terming is a little different I know what you mean about the guns. I am a big fan of the "ma duece" To answer the other question yes we do you eights sometime but other just something kinda like a munter on a carabiner.
Jared


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## Tree Machine (Oct 25, 2007)

John Paul Sanborn said:


> The method of descent on the talus/scree you saw is called Australian rappel. I remember the movie too, it was South american narco terrorists doing a ransom kidnapping.


That was the one ! The clip shat showed them doing this was only like 3/4 of a second long. That scene stuck with me, probably because I replayed it a few times. I couldn't see what was being used, except that they were not just using their hand.

SO, we have an unknown device used by narco-terrorists who kidnap a dude they _think_ works for big oil, but really doesn't, and big oil says "This is not our guy, sorry." and the really, really hot wife wants her hubby back so she hires a private hostage negotiator, who apparently she thinks is pretty hot, and throws down, but the problem is kidnap-dude has been taken to the deep mountains of the Colombian jungle so they just don't know _where_ he is. And we have the entire US Armed forces rapping on 8's and biners.

Doesn't seem like much evolution since the manila rope era.


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## John Paul Sanborn (Oct 25, 2007)

Tree Machine said:


> SO, we have an unknown device used by narco-terrorists who kidnap a dude they



Could be a modern belay device, but it works with a munter just as well from my experience.

The elite units have huge black budgets, they can buy stuff and play with it to see how it works. But when it comes down to it, they want multi-purpose and light weight. If you have to hump it in with a full combat load....


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## 2FatGuys (Oct 25, 2007)

"Back in the day", when I was doing a lot of rock climbing and teaching climbing and rappelling, we did some of the Australian rappelling so we could watch the student descend as we descended above them on another rope. It's actually pretty simple. It can be done with several different devices, hung from a rear loop or rigged equally between two side loops toward the back. We usually used a pair of non-locking carabiners with "brake bars" on them (similar to the Petzl Rack sold now). Sometimes, we would "lose rig" an 8 off the side so that we could turn in mid descent from "normal" to face down. You can see an example of a rear loop rigging on Wikipedia by looking up "Abseiling". It is NOT the safest way down since your back is to the rope and you can't visually see what your equipment is doing, but it does have purposes other than good guy / bad guy shoot-em-ups.


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## John Paul Sanborn (Oct 25, 2007)

fecrousejr said:


> but it does have purposes other than good guy / bad guy shoot-em-ups.



BASE jumping w/o a parachute....


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## 2FatGuys (Oct 25, 2007)

I think the image on Wiki is from a movie I saw once on YouTube showing the guy walking down the face of a dam. It can be a very controlled descent.


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## Tree Machine (Oct 25, 2007)

JP said:


> BASE jumping w/o a parachute....


 :angry2: TROLL!


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## Tree Machine (Oct 25, 2007)

A good descent device should let you descend upside-down, at any inverted angle, as well as traditionally. You should be able to lock it off, one-handed within one second so you can work hands-free, allowing your hands to attend to your flipline and saws and kit.

With the ATC Guide (or any of the ATC's or ATC-esque devices, the belay tube family), these devices were originally intended for belaying a climber from the ground, the belay person controlling the rappell of the climber above.

But these devices can also be used for self-belay and abseil. In having been designed for ground belay, being used by a person with _two free hands and 100% focussed attention_, the devices were not truly intended for monkeys who climb with chain saws, silky saws, pole pruners and pole saws along with a saddle of slings and biners. Although a small, aluminum piece of descent gear is a tiny fraction of what gets carried into and used in the tree, if properly designed, should allow the tree worker to do the tree worker thing with all those tools with complete control of position and versatility in your technical climbing skills.

The ATC family are not the devices for us. They are not lock-offable. They are not hands-free, or hand-off devices. Nice in that they offer enough friction to cover 90-95% of control, meaning your rope-squeeze hand only needs to offer the remaning fraction. You can abseil (technically speaking) by squeezing the standing end of the rope between your knees.

This means the ATC Guide will allow you (again, technically speaking) to abseil in an inverted Aussie style, swan dive-like, but since it has no lockoff is very limiting in it's use in tree work. 

Here's a look at a large number of the belay tube devices out there. The ATC Guide is bottom row, middle.


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## 2FatGuys (Oct 25, 2007)

GREAT link TM! I went one page previous to that and had some fond memories. We used to use some of the plate type belay devices from the ground (or from above). I still have a pair of them hanging on my wall that we never use any more. There are LOTS of older devices on that page...


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## Mitchell (Oct 25, 2007)

*my 2 cents*

I like and use the petzel gri gri on 11mil. I just do not like its self tending tendencies; the rope slips back through the device. I lost the 8's to avoid clutter on my saddle. I have rappelled down a spar or two on my larger bull lines with it but it heats up

I do like the gri gri's big brother the rescue ID on larger ropes and it has the anti panic. I have also thought about [but have not tried] using it to self lower out pieces when you do not have a porta wrap and block already rigged. I use it often in my other endeavors as a high angle rescuer to lower loads but have not tried it in tree work yet. 

when I was in the military we rappelled on a couple linked beaners! very fast but no forgivness.


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## Mr.Roehler (Nov 6, 2007)

I would like to add that the unicender can be used in this situation on a SRT line. It can be used to ascend and descend using only a single device. Tom Dunlap uses this and I have got the opportunity to play with it for a little while. I think it's a great piece of equipment but is a bit pricey at the moment. Plus it is relevantly new.


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## OTG BOSTON (Nov 6, 2007)

Mr.Roehler said:


> I would like to add that the unicender can be used in this situation on a SRT line. It can be used to ascend and descend using only a single device. Tom Dunlap uses this and I have got the opportunity to play with it for a little while. I think it's a great piece of equipment but is a bit pricey at the moment. Plus it is relevantly new.




beat me to it. Ditto. I can only guess that TM made a typing error..........opcorn:


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## tree md (Nov 6, 2007)

I climbed traditional for a lot of years and still do occasionally. I went to a split tail system early this year and just got a Black Diamond hand ascender (thanks for the tip OTG), a CMI foot ascender, a bent ear figure 8 and prussic cord for backup. I have climbed and descended SRT with a figure in the past. I do most of my work on a doubled line but there are times when a single line and figure 8 are quicker and make a lot more sense.


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## Tree Machine (Nov 7, 2007)

OTG BOSTON said:


> I can only guess that TM made a typing error..........


I could have, and would be more than willing to retract and stand corrected.


What was the alleged typing error?


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## OTG BOSTON (Nov 7, 2007)

Tree Machine said:


> Of the two notable 'Treeguy' devices, the Unicender and the Lockjack, those are both modeled to accomodate our 2:1 ascent/descent system. Neither does SRT, so you're limited. Neither goes 1:1 ascent or descent.
> 
> :




right here, I've seen Tom D do it with my own eyes


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## Tree Machine (Nov 7, 2007)

My apologies. I do stand corrected. I have never used the device, but hope to. I was using another climber's words, one who had experience using the device. Normally I speak only from a place of personal experience. This was an exception. My bad.


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## OTG BOSTON (Nov 7, 2007)

Tree Machine said:


> My apologies. I do stand corrected. I have never used the device, but hope to. I was using another climber's words, one who had experience using the device. Normally I speak only from a place of personal experience. This was an exception. My bad.




You're still The Man TM!!!! Tom D is very cool about letting people try out his unicender, if you ever get a chance to be in the same place as he is.....


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## Josh777 (Sep 28, 2011)

luckylogger said:


> What' s the best way to rappell out of a tree?


 
I've used almost every descender on the market and the one I like the best is the Petzl Pirana. During a drop, it is so easy to vary the amount of friction or even tie off that I find myself hard pressed to even want to try something else. 

Another benefit is that there is no need to even detach anything from the harness. Push a quick bite of rope through the main entry point and then push the loop through the biner gate and it's done. From that state friction can be varied by either throwing the rope around the horns or not, based upon speed preference. It's really quite easy.:msp_thumbup:


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## 2treeornot2tree (Sep 28, 2011)

You can always just wrap your rope around like you would for drt but make sure both ends hit the ground and use a rescue 8 to come down on both halfs, that way you can pull your rope down if your done.


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