How Do You Brace Yourself When Takin A Wild Ride?

[Jomo]

Catching tops and trunks can often be a violent affair, particularly if there's no room for your ropeman to let the piece run due to targets.

Mild rides are no biggie. But serious rides are another matter, in which it is vital to triangulate on the catch wood, and use both arms to push against that trunk, and move as one with it as it oscillates back and forth. Failing to do this on a serious ride can result in the climber being thrown about like a rag doll being beaten by the swinging baseball bat they're lanyarded onto.

So when I go for big rides catchin anything, I like my lanyard adjusted so I can straight arm the trunk wood in front of me, and push against it during the ride, moving as one with the dynamic swaying until things calm down.

I've seen a few vids with other experienced climbers who tend to grab the trunk wood during a ride, reaching around and holding onto it during the swaying, and it puzzles me.

I know it may seem counter intuitive to push against a swaying trunk you're attached to during a serious ride. But that's exactly what I do when I know it's going to be a rough ride. If my lanyard were to fail I'd go flying off to hell at warp speed!

There's only been one instance when my straight arming strength failed me while taking a serious ride. And I've got the lateral scar across my solar plexus where my chest hit the upper edge of the trunk wood that cut me, as we thrashed about together to remind me.

So do you grab and hold on during serious rides?

Or push against it like I do to move as one with it?

Jomo

 

[SouthSoundTree]

I don't really have the room to blow big tops, typically, on rigging. Too much underplanting.

I could see it both ways. If you hug, you may not get slapped into the tree, as you may if you are trying to straight arm it.

An interesting question.

So this incident may be the impetus for the bull riding vest, then?

 

[MasterBlaster]

As the tree is bowing over, I bear hug it before it catapults back. I make sure my chest is firmly planted against the tree. No straight arm for me - I voluntarily become one with the tree before the tree makes me involuntarily become part of it.

 

[Grendel]

I push off, try and take all the slack/wobble out of my connection. If my lanyard were to fail, my choked climb line would catch me. . . hopefully

 

[RopeArmour]

I crouch and grab tight the lanyard.
Legs push against and brace and arms just hold the balance.
I always am training new rope person so it works for me.
Double braid nylon helps a ton as well as lotsa rope in the system.
Take all the stretch out of the system and shorten everything up tight cause
there is quite a bit of difference between catching 3' to 4' with a thousand lbs dropping.
Cheers

 

[Jomo]

I've watched two climbers get the hell beat out of them by grabbin instead of pushin while catchin serious heads, and it was a bloody mess both times!

Different strokes for different blokes!

Jomo

 

[Altissimus]

...I have never hugged the stem, set spikes good and if no staubs to keep lanyard in place I will wrap once around...I like enough space for the movement as many people have been bruised up good being too close...but big tops I very rarely send on rigging...

 

[CurSedVoyce]

Bracing ones self keeps the gaffs planted better IMO and you just move with the tree.
Most the time I will just go higher and make the top smaller to make the ride less significant. Or leave limbs below to help cushion the sway.

 

[Jomo]

An even more challenging aspect of maintaining an upright and balanced orientation during wild rides is doing it out on a long lateral with an upper TIP.

Say you're speedlining the head? You want to stay on top of the catch limb you're lanyarded to right? To do that during the ride demands at least one hand on your upper climb line to compensate against the oscillation with one armed contact to a stable point above you. Which means you must trip the ride with one hand, using either trimsaw or handsaw. Some guys can time things well enough to quickly chuck their saw down onto its lanyard before bracing themselves for the ride.

It's these situations that I one hand my 200t with to trip the ride. Sometimes with one knee between me and the catch limb to compensate for having no hands available to push with. One spike set, one knee pushing to triangulate with, one hand on my trimsaw cuttin, the other gripping my upper TIP climbline.

I actually crack up thinkin bout poor politically correct schmucks tryin to keep both hands on their climb saws in such situations! Ending up hanging from the bottom of the laterals as it bounces about!

That trimsaw in one hand can act like the balance pole the great Wallenda's use!

Jomo

 

[Marc-Antoine]

As the tree is bowing over, I bear hug it before it catapults back. I make sure my chest is firmly planted against the tree. No straight arm for me - I voluntarily become one with the tree before the tree makes me involuntarily become part of it.

I do that too.
When the rope catch the falling head, the trunk bows forward extremely fast. I don't like the straight arms thing because your back takes all the bite. I paid the price two time and it's painful. I even heard (and felt) a "crack" in my vertebrae.
I prefer the bear hug, or koala hug if you prefer.
Managing the rigging rope's movement and then the slam in the trunk could be a little tricky tough. It's a matter of timing. Not so easy.

I make my face cut on the spikes. I shorten my lanyard and hang on it after voluntary gaffed out. My shocked climb line is there too. The purpose is to be as close to the trunk as I can. I make the back cut and as the top falls, I brace the trunk over the bloc, the body straight against the trunk.
I keep the chainsaw in hand because I don't want a deadly flying device around me.
When the rope catches the top, it's the "wow" moment and I love hard my trunk !
Then the trunk comes back and the top slams in it. At this moment, I brace my legs around the trunk or lock them on the sides (it depends if it's a log, a top, the amount of limbs...). I'm ready for the second hard part of the ride, the backward movement and the next forward one.

I hate that.

 

[Maximalist]

 

[Maximalist]

Yes, Jomo, you raised a hot topic. During the fall of the vertices should repay dinamichesuy sharp blow by the pendulum in the opposite direction, while the maximum load. Thank you for your understanding!

 

[Jomo]

Thanks brother Maxim!

Work safe mate!

Jomo

 

[SouthSoundTree]

Andrey is our Russian friend, showing us how cold weather work is done!

 

[Jomo]

I've seen some Russian logging truck vids fording raging rivers that blew my mind!

This one I think..

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Not that one, this one!

<iframe width="420" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/6HKeNn4T3EY" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Jomo

 

[Jomo]

I've spent enough time working with pro loggers to realize that there's a world of difference between them and the typical working arborists in metro big cities.

The logger's world has no trimsaws, the only thing that gets them off the ground is rigging drag lines, or saving board feet from being wasted. They laugh at the notion of an 8 hour work day, work from sunup till sundown, but make over twice as much as their poor urban arborist cousins. Putting ropes in trees to pull them over in a particular direction's a waste of valuable time in a logger's eyes!

Most of my contact with them was after the big fires in the Big Bear/ Lake Arrowhead mountains above LA, Palomar Mountain, and in Seattle after a nasty blow. I found the best of them to be masters on the ground, highly mechanized, with production rates that far surpass even the best commercial tree services, by a huge margin.

But when it came to technical tree removals over high value targets? It was either get a crane or forget it! That was my in card!

Spent bout a year rubbing elbows with them, and learned a helluva lot from them!

But technical removals without a crane just ain't their thang!

At least not the loggers I met and worked with.

Jomo

 

[Szajer]

Ugh!

Just had this happen where I was knocking out a 15' top of a Norfolk Pine. My employer has no prior knowledge of running ropes, so I knew I was in for a rough ride. As the top comes back into the trunk, I was never thrown in my entire career as I was that day. Next day there were bruises on my knees, forearms, shoulders, inner thighs and chest. I sent him the photos to show how important it is to start paying attention more.

Of course I wanted to kill him, but as I said, he knows not what he's doing.

 

[Mick!]

We had a bit of a thread re. "Letting it run"........my groundy can't do it either, it's always smashing my teeth which worries me the most.

 

[cory]

I remember my worst one, cut out the top of a very dead sugar maple near some beefy electrical lines, climbed as high as I dared, given all the competing factors, set up the drop crotch and made the cut. You know it's bad when you are ready for it but your spurs still get kicked out of the trunk by the bull ride. Never again, no thank you. Gnarsty.

 

[Szajer]

We had a bit of a thread re. "Letting it run"........my groundy can't do it either, it's always smashing my teeth which worries me the most.

I've been knocked around before, for sure- but my current employer doesn't have the ability to understand the dynamics of slacking, then tailing off slowly -to make one fluid motion, then to a stop. I'd like to say that a climber has better knowledge -and the skill set to achieve this —but no, my groundman up north was never a climber and he just had the finesse it takes to accomplish a smooth transition.

I'm thinking its a result of wet brain.

 

[Jomo]

One of the reasons I like speedlining so much is the catch branch never takes the full load as it descends along its corridor.

 

[rskybiz]

I'm a arms length guy after a ride doing a leaning oak and breaking a rib. I am aware the strain on my back and with a proper person on the rope feel comfortable and enjoy the ride.

 

[Szajer]

One of the reasons I like speedlining so much is the catch branch never takes the full load as it descends along its corridor.

Never done a proper speedline. I've used vertical speedline to keep chunks from bouncing or rolling away from the base though. Would love to give it a shot sometime when the conditions are met.

 

[Jomo]

I'm a arms length guy after a ride doing a leaning oak and breaking a rib. I am aware the strain on my back and with a proper person on the rope feel comfortable and enjoy the ride.

Being an independent sub for hire so long exposes you to a vast pool of iffy groundies, which has encouraged me to become capable of rigging touchy stuff, without my well being in their hands, like speedlining, where if they don't drop that rope and run soon enough?

Well, that's their problem more so than mine!

Ain't I turrible?

Jomo

 

[MasterBlaster]

Crappy groundmen were the reason I came up with this!