Ixskllr: JEPSON!!! I forgot about that book, and right you are sir... I gotta remember to suggest that. They will buy it for everyone in a heartbeat, man they got tons of money. No trainers though!!!
Gary/Rich: Yeah, that's the story, and they're stiking to it, (not that I have reason to doubt them). My manager personally showed me (they don't want it on the internet) the video this morning, and you can pretty clearly see what happened. The fall was definitely a bit higher than 50'; from the vid, I would say something much closer to 65'/70'. In the vid, you can see that he has gone up to remove a multiple topped (rare for our area) Hemlock. He is on spurs and flipline. He goes up the highest/stoutest stem in order to gain an optimal tie-in point for his climb-line in order to facillitate the removal of the two subordinate stems. In the vid, you can clearly see the moment when he unclips his steel-core in order to attempt to descend in a slight spiraling arch to alight on the lowest stem. One can also see the suspect termination knot hold tension for a moment, (just long enough for his tie-in point to displace his body weight, and swing him out a good four feet from the trunk... then... the near free-fall... outward from the trunk (one almost feels when watching the video, that the standing part of his line somehow IS burning SOME friction over the intervening limbs but not much, and then (obviously the grace of God) the silly bugger is SLIGHTLY (but only slightly, I must say) ensnared in some adjacent Red Cedar limbs (thuja plicata) before smashing into (the boys say that you could hear a pronounced "thud," and that he left, "an 18" deep divot in the duff) ground. Everyone came running at once. He was knocked unconscious for approx. 12 seconds... when he came to, he was quoted as saying, "My overhand knot came undone... my overhand knot came undone." Then Ben, his foreman, said, "TYSON!!! WHY! did you tie an OVERHAND knot!!!" He did not respond.
By the way... he absolutely did NOT just, "walk away." I think that Devin Warrick, the very young man who related the first-hand account to me, was in some kind of shock when he told me the lurid tale. In reality he was carried out on a stretcher to an ambulance. The hospital imaging equiptment revealed that he had fractured three vertebra, and bruised his lung. Must be nice to be 19. It's like guardian angels broke his fall just a bit.
In trying to process all of the rubbish from the safety meeting, I could only chalk up the incident to the extremely impoverished 3rd generation logging culture that Tyson decends from. I can only speculate that he got scared, freaked out, and yet was under so much cultural pressure to "man up," not be a wuss, and just get it done somehow, (remember all the boys were watching and videoing 😔) that he spaced out on the Anchor Hitch which Ben had shown him many, many, times, and which he had succesfully climbed on at least six times, and just did the only thing that his feeble condition would allow him. Poor guy man. I don't know what to make of it. I hear that he is responding to texts. I'm gonna text him after I post this.
