canopy,
When possible I'll tie off the bottom to a different tree then the one i'm climbing. It keeps the anchored side of the srt line furthur out of harms way.
Set up the tail with a split tail system and you can work off both tips til you get to the top. Switch to Ddrt and work the otherside of the tree on the way down.
Sometimes I do that as well, sometimes it's not an option. In this case, the way the tree was at the TIP, my downline was about 8-12" off the spar on the backside. Even tied to another tree, you can get into that kind of situation near your TIP. The branch I was cutting was coming off the spar at about 45 degrees, and as I made my notch I rolled the bar around so the bar nose caught the line on the backside.
Others mentioned a groundie cutting your rope or something getting caught on the way down. I really only work with one or two groundies, and first of all I trust them. Second of all, I'm not sure why they should be cutting near the trunk 4' off the ground while I'm in the tree. If I'm SRT, it's probably a prune job and there shouldn't be that much big stuff piling up against the trunk that they need to be swinging a saw that high.
As for how I do SRT, I've become rather fond of using the grigri. It gets hot on long descents and can be a bit touchy on a new rope (the one I cut had been used 3 times maybe
). I've had reasonable luck with friction hitches as well, you just have to realize it's not the same as DRT.
But regardless, as others said -- I try to learn as many different ways to do things as possible, and apply them when appropriate. When it starts to get monotonous, I'll probably stop doing it. SRT is great sometimes,
but this thread was just a word of caution that without both ropes in front of you, you have one more thing to pay attention to. (And of course being tied in more than once when cutting is a good idea....)
