questions re: climbing basics

[monkeypuzzle]

JPS, are you saying "treemen" or everyone should never free climb any tree? I do agree 100% treemen and treewomen should never free climb while they are working, but you gotta let the little boys and little girls be little boys and little girls right. It's as American as apple pie to me. My grandmother had the worlds best tree for free climbing on the planet. Southern Magnolia

 

[Steve Bunyan]

Old habits die hard. My scarestrap is an adjustable leather belt that the utility uses to climb poles. But even they have 100% tie-off with a second flipline. I can blame the boss all I want for not supplying the right equipment but its my own fault for working with it. You should see how stupid I look halfway up a spruce on spurs with my arms wrapped around the tree trying to shorten this belt to compensate for the difference in trunk diameter.

 

[MasterBlaster]

Originally posted by Steve Bunyan
You should see how stupid I look halfway up a spruce on spurs with my arms wrapped around the tree trying to shorten this belt to compensate for the difference in trunk diameter. [/B]

Steve, ya gotta get an ascender and a piece of rope and make a new lanyard!!! Whole new world! You'll never go back!

Retire that scarestrap!

 

[NickfromWI]

You don't need an ascender. Almost any friction hitch will do. Try the Distel!

love
nick

 

[Tree Machine]

Heck yea, knotless climbing exists

Ya gotta do knots...it's so deeply ingrained in all manner of ropework that I don't see how you can call yourself a pro climber/rope technician without that skill in spades. I can't believe knotless climbing even exists.

I do use knots once in awhile. More often though, I use hitches.

Knotless climbing DOES exist (10 years.....). You use ascenders to go up a doubled rope and you switch over to any number of fricton control systems once you're in the tree. How you do this depends very much on your choice of friction control.

When I lower a limb, I flip the binered eye around the limb to be lowered and clip it back to the rope. Or I'll get fancy and do a quick cow hitch. Either way, it's just a couple-few seconds. If I need to lower the limb (say I'm working alone) and need to retrieve my rope end, this requires a sling chokered around the limb to be lowered and fundamental rigging to get the limb softly to the ground and get the rope back. With a knot, someone down there has to undo it.

I enjoy very much knots and hitches as part of our profession, it's just my rigging and climbing are so much faster and efficient without them. -TM-

 

[Tom Dunlap]

Steve wrote:

Old habits die hard.

As long as its only habits that are dying. Your old work habits are putting you in a very risky situation. Ask your children/wife/parents/siblings/significant other to make safety desicions for you and I'll bet you would be changing your old habits a lot quicker.

My scarestrap is an adjustable leather belt that the utility
uses to climb poles.

My "Scarestrap" got retired almost twenty years ago. The one I had was fiber not leather. If you're climbing on a leather one, you might as well hold a hair trigger pistol to your head. It is DANGEROUS!!! I wonder when that was manufactured. Probably long before your pickup.

Take a look at the archives and find out how easy, and cheap! it is to make up a modern, adjustable lanyard. If budget is an issue, get a steel, double locking rope snap and a three foot piece of acceptable accessory cord along with a ten foot piece of serviceable climbing line. Tie a few knots and hitches and you will join the modern age.

Climbing like you are is Eight Track Climbing. Get modern, you'll live longer. And, be healthier to boot

Tom

 

[dbeck]

what tom said AND you'll have more fun w/ more modern equipment. That's right, work in trees is fun w/ the right equipment.

nebclimber, don't be discouraged by what maas, said earlier in this thread. I do agree to an extent that inexperienced people do cause insurance rates to go up - only if they have insurance, right?
You are tryin to gain experience and knowledge by chatting here, i'll give you credit for that. take everything SLOW, and learn the ropes. They hold you alive. Learn the tactics and methods, they keep people, property and you safe. once an old time climber (old timer?) told me "it takes a climber about a year to get halfway good at climbing and about three years until he/she will be considered a good climber by peers"
Keep that in mind and keep striving to be the best!

 

[timberfell]

Steve Bunyan,

Passing the tail in front, instead of behind the standing part of the rope as you tuck the tail trough the coils on a Blake's will create what is known as the "suicslide" knot, it won't bite well, if at all. Unfortunatly, I have seen people tie it that way. Make sure you compare yours with some good pictures. I have never had the problem with mine not "biting", although I switched to the distel.


I hope a descibed that right, I don't have a piece of rope on me now to tie as I write.!!

Kurt.

 

[Burnham]

Tree Machine, is a hitch not a type of knot?

Maybe you mean that you seldom tie a knot in the tree when climbing...if so, I guess I can see your point.

But to me, if you tie up a lanyard using a friction hitch adjuster on your sofa at home, then go out and use it in the tree, or tie up a Blake's, Distel, you name it, on the ground and then ascend, work, and descend on it then you are using knots in climbing. Don't you use a throw bag and line? How do you attach your throw line to the bag, or the throw line to your climbing line to place it in the tree?

In my book, one could only claim knotless climbing if everything you use is either spliced or mechanical...but that is just my definition, worth every penny y'all paid for it .

If you really "very much enjoy knots", how can you not know how to tie a bowline...or maybe that was just bait for a sucker like me to roar at... .

 

[TREETX]

Climbing is a progression. Start simple. Blake's or TL. Then throw in a split tail. Next evolution step. Is moving to a super short/no bridge and a distel. Then versions of the VT. I am at the VT. Somewhere in there adding FC and/or RG.

What is next?? Removing limbs via Jedi mind tricks??

 

[John Paul Sanborn]

Originally posted by Burnham
Tree Machine, is a hitch not a type of knot?

A hitch is a knot that can be untied easily. Blakes hitch, cow hitch...

 

[TheTreeSpyder]

Mmm i thought that a hitch was something that tied around something more properly. Then ya 'bend' lines together, other stuff is knots, or anything small etc. Generically all knots to most.......orrrrrrr something like that!

i'd recomend that any loop in your lifline below you (tieing in with tail etc.) is touching ground or guarded very carefully. Cuz ya sure wouldn't want to drop 300# 10' into it!

i tie a bowline (temporary eye) and rig all day with slings/karabs hooking into that eye; as well as sling/karab sets performing many other integral functions. i'd kinda call it knotless rigging anyways. Bowline could be spliced eye(sometimes is); or might be from yesterday (nope, don't play that way).

Slings are quick, and can be preset, even trailed 10' out as you set previous limb; so ya don't have to make that trip again etc. i think they are the pro-flexible utility grab etc.

If we got disturbed over a tough MM view; this place would be a ghost town!

edit-i think one determination of hitch or knot; is a hitch goes around something, who's size may vary, there fore the strength of the hitch can vary, because of how tight the arc of leveraged fibres grabbing around assorted devices. A normal bowline goes around a post; but it's limiting strength factor would be the half hitch that forms around it's own tail twice; so it would be a knot i think. It's cousin, the sheet bend works on the same principal only like cut open bowline to join 2 ropes. But it loses some security in doing so, for now the half hitch is only pulled tight in one direction, because of cutting open the other one.

 

[Tree Machine]

knotless climbing.....

Tree Machine, is a hitch not a type of knot?

I'm very glad you asked. Lest we not forget 'bends' either. Knots, hitches and bends. They're sorta distinct animals, and we could get lengthy in technically defining each (see page 16, The Complete Book of Knots by Geoffrey Budworth). A knot though, is sort of generic term and can include bends and hitches. Hitches are used to tie a rope to SOMETHING, monofilament line to a fishin hook, rope to a hitching post, slickline on a shotbag ring. If you tie a hook onto monofilament line, no matter how you do it, it's considereed a knot even though, technically it will always be a hitch.

Knots are more of a rope-tied-to-rope thing (surgeon's knot, double fisherman, etc), though, many hitches are rope-on-rope, but if you were to tie the two ends of an identical rope together, it would very likely be a knot (unless you used a cow hitch with a half hitch on a sliding bowline).

I'm not condoning not using knots. I love knots and hitches and used to use them frequently. But I have eyes spliced into both ends of every single rope I own, regardless of length - even my accessory lines for tying things down.

This means anything I'm putting on the end of that rope gets chokered by simply going around the limb and clipping the caribiner back to the rope. Or for a bit more security, I go around the limb, 180 around the rope, back up around the limb and clip the rope back to itself - a cow hitch. Or I'll choker( or even prusik) the item to be lowered with a web sling and clip IT to the spliced eye. It just makes my rigging more swift. No 'knots' required - TM -

 

[MasterBlaster]

I jest use a Bowline to rope limbs.

Never failed me yet.

 

[Tree Machine]

Knotless climbing.....

... if you tie up a lanyard using a friction hitch adjuster on your sofa at home, then go out and use it in the tree, or tie up a Blake's, Distel, you name it, on the ground and then ascend, work, and descend on it then you are using knots in climbing.

I use mechanical friction devices to move about the tree, and to rappell. I use a double-ended wirecore flipline with a microcender for adjusting.

In my book, one could only claim knotless climbing if everything you use is either spliced or mechanical...

That's the claim, sir.

If you really "very much enjoy knots", how can you not know how to tie a bowline...

I didn't say I didn't know how to tie or use a bowline, rather that I just don't use it.

Don't you use a throw bag and line? How do you attach your throw line to the bag, or the throw line to your climbing line to place it in the tree?

I tie my ZipIt line to an aluminum spring-gate caribiner called the Black Diamond Micron; the miniature, but otherwise identical, form of the BD Hotwire. This stays permanently on my throwline. Clip the slickline's light, little caribiner to the rope's eye, and up she goes. I tie the micron on with a triple cow. OK. I'm therefore not 100% knotless. -TM-

 

[Tom Dunlap]

What devices are you using for working and rapping?

Tom

 

[Tree Machine]

Climbing basics

There are a buttload of friction devices out there, all kinds from all different industries, sports and professions. Many I have not even tried.

A mechanical friction device just needs to fulfil three requirements (for me): needs to go onto the rope WHILE my ascenders are still on (switch over to roam, then remove the ascenders). I need to be able to adjust the amount of friction depending on the amount of force I'm putting on the rope with pretty much a fingertip touch, and I need to be able to hang, hands free, suspended. SRT or DdRT. All this, you are doing using friction hitches, so why am I using mechanical?

Rigging onto (or off) the rope is under 5 seconds. This on rope / off rope happens many dozens of times in a day and in being frequent and repetitive, I like to have it boiled down, simple, quick and bombproof. I can switch from rappell to ascend, or vice versa, while suspended on rope. Though I prefer SRT, I work primarily DdRT.

What mechanical friction system I use is not important. I'm not asking anyone to change, but rather to know that there are other basic ways to do what you all are already doing...- so if friction hitches are working well (and they are) don't change. -TM-

 

[John Paul Sanborn]

One of the problems with our overuse of abreiviations. DdRT is ascending on a doubled rope vs ascending on a single rope (SRT). Both ropes kept static in the crotch. (we adopted the second "D" to avoid theit being mistaken for using 2 separate ropes, which I have heard of people using in trees, and is frequently used in other rope disiplines)

I assume you work on the traditional loo system which renders a hypothetical 2:1 advantage?

 

[dbeck]

Re: Climbing basics

Originally posted by Tree Machine
.
What mechanical friction system I use is not important.


Tom is just curious, every time I see him at a convention I am amazed at his collection of gadgetry and , in turn, his ability to pay for all of them!

 

[Tom Dunlap]

Tree Machine,

I know about all of the friction devices that are available. Instead of rattling on about functions blah, blah, blah, could you just, simply, answer my question?

What device are you using? How about a free exchange of information? Open, friendly, dialog? Banter? Give and take?

Ascending on SRT is wierd enough for most people in the professsion. Working on SRT is down right other-dimensional. For several years I've ascended SRT and lately I spend more time working on SRT than DdRT. There is lots to learn, why not share what you've figured out. I think that I've been pretty generous.

Am I ranting? You could say so...

Your volley, TM

Tom

dbeck wrote: every time I see him at a convention I am amazed at his collection of gadgetry and, in turn, his ability to pay for all of them!

And, I'll add, work productively and share performance tips freely. Chainsaws could be considered gadgetry if you only use handsaws Same for pickups if you only ride horses... All of the stuff is tools to me.