its time for me to upgrade my style.

[Burnham]

I'm obviously spoiled by a career of working with well trained and talented climbing partners and crew...worrying about the security of a base anchor on an SRT climb just hasn't been enough of a factor to ever wave me off of that technique.

It's easy for me to say, I suppose, but I will anyway...if you can't trust your crew to protect your anchor, you need new people.

 

[Koala]

It makes great sense to me

On tallest trees I set a rope only for the ascent (SRT) and always tie it at the base. But I'm not working on that.
I bring my rope up and choose my TIP.
As you say every situation is different.
When I'm working on my jobs I trust the (great) guys working with me. When i'm working for other companies ( like this week) it's not the same thing.
We got an old saying here which goes : " to trust someone is a good thing, not to trust is even better."
Don't know if it comes out in the right way in english, guess you would say "Better safe than sorry".

 

[Tucker943]

I'm obviously spoiled by a career of working with well trained and talented climbing partners and crew...worrying about the security of a base anchor on an SRT climb just hasn't been enough of a factor to ever wave me off of that technique.

It's easy for me to say, I suppose, but I will anyway...if you can't trust your crew to protect your anchor, you need new people.

True. My guys do know that my skinning line is to be guarded like gold. When I move down in a tree, and up comes some brush wrapped up in my climbing line, I flip out. I don't yell at my men, but for that, I scream.

 

[SkwerI]

I got thoroughly chewed out and threatened with being fired for screaming at some dumb frig that almost sent the tail of my lifeline through the chipper. Thousands of situations like that and many years of working with people whom I could not trust with my life resulted in an extreme aversion to trusting anybody with anything.

 

[Burnham]

Understandable, Brian. Just glad I don't work have to work with people like that.

Wonder if there is a correlation...my climbing partners and ground help have all been FS employees. You know, those government culls you love to lambast?

Yours have been the always to be praised private sector workers, people with more ambition than those of us who take these easy gov't jobs, just so we can sit around and draw a fat pension at the end.


To be serious, though...I get to hand pick the people who work on my projects, for the most part. I certainly get to insist on some specific people to handle critical tasks. Not everyone can do what I, or you, need done in this sort of work...maybe not many. I do feel like I have a much better pool than y'all usually report.

 

[SkwerI]

Well you got me on that one B. Maybe I'm just stuck in my ways and not very good at being told what to do (since so much of what I've been told to do in my life has been wrong).

 

[DMc]

This may take awhile, but I will try to address everyone's comments.

Butch, I have a flip line and a climbing line choked to the tree. In your picture, you have a flip line, and I presume, your doubled rope system choked around the tree. If you take away my friction control device, which probably looks as simple as a space shuttle to many here, what we are doing is pretty much the same. There are some differences.

Only half the length of my rope is coiled on the ground. Much less than what you will have if your rope is long enough to reach the ground on a doubled rope system. On a removal using an SRT system, if that ground-coiled rope gets snagged on brush or buried under an errant log, and that happens to be the moment I need to leave the tree, I can. The tail end being snagged on a doubled rope system will stop the descent until that line is cleared.

Also, the doubled rope system merely wrapped around the tree and snugged up may give you cut protection, it doesn't necessarily allow you to descend the tree.

Dave

 

[DMc]

Burnham, I have recently been playing around with the Rope Wrench/Unicender combination. As you know, I am a hardcore mechanical hitch convert. I have no intention of going back to rope hitches. However, I got the RW because I wanted to learn more about it. I don't like talking or discussing topics without having an informed basis for my opinions. Often times you will note in this thread opinions can be strong, even if there is no knowledge behind that opinion.

These modern systems are so new and so different that unless you have actually tried them, you really don't have a good understanding of how they work. I'm still trying to determine the pros and cons of the Uni/RW combo. So far, all I am finding are pros. But I am reticent to be too vocal about that on the off-chance that I might blunder upon a flaming flaw. We shall see.

Dave

 

[Burnham]

Clean, Dave. What's the tether between them?

 

[Tucker943]

No, in many cases you aren't in a position to descend on a spar. Years ago I got tired of working off my lanyard while working spars down. As a result, I always game plan my spars early on in the removal and leave a nub or a very small stub in select locations on the spar. Not big dangerous stubs that hinder lowering or get my ropes bound up. Just enough carefully selected protrusions that I use to hang my climbing line on when I make my way back down the tree so I can put my weight on my line and not on my lanyard. Carefully selected though. Like a game of chess.

 

[DMc]

... I myself lean towards a much more simple approach on working spars down.

Tucker, How much simpler do you go? I have literally removed hundreds of trees with nothing more than a flip line, spurs and a chainsaw. I could put them on the ground fast. This was SOP in the time period in which I started working. We rarely set a high tie in on a removal prior to spurring up the tree. Is this the more simple approach you are talking about?

I now do use a second tie in point. If you do also, choking off the spar with your climbing line and a simple SRT descending device doesn't get much more simple than that. If you then add an ascender/descender that works on the single rope, you will have more versatility and still almost no clutter.

Dave

 

[DMc]

Reddog, you got it right.

Dave

 

[DMc]

...I wouldn't feel so comfortable being up in the tree and tied at the base of it, with people working around my rope.
But maybe it's just me.
Or maybe it's just because I know the attention the majority of the groundie pays to the rope ( at least around here....)

Sorry for the derail

SRT work positioning, as a system, absolutely does not require a ground or based-tied rope. It is merely an option. If you are working in a situation where it will not benefit you, there are many other ways to tie off.

Dave

 

[bonner1040]

I think its a quickdraw Burnham.

 

[Burnham]

Can't see how a quick draw could be mounted on the Uni...that's a closed point.

 

[DMc]

...if you can't trust your crew to protect your anchor, you need new people.

Absolutely, Burnham.

Dave

 

[bonner1040]

Can't see how a quick draw could be mounted on the Uni...that's a closed point.

Thats a good point, I read about somebody wanting to have QD made for the RW with a ring on the top of it to attach to an over the shoulder teather.

It looks like flat webbing to me, like a doubled up bar tacked kinda thing doesnt it?

Dave?

 

[Burnham]

It does look so, yes.

 

[DMc]

Clean, Dave. What's the tether between them?

5/8" nylon web, quadrupled and handsewn. It needs to be stiff because of the metal-on-metal, the RW cannot be allowed to flop about as it may adversely affect the Unicender. The stiff tether gives this combo great control and a very subtle and supple feel.

The other nice thing about the Unicender is it is perfectly happy working a single line all by itself. It is the only tool in combination with the RW, that I know of, that can make that statement.

Dave

 

[bonner1040]

Hand sewn? No machine? I like it. Where did you get the nylon and what kind of thread did you use? It it like a bartack or an X ?

 

[Tucker943]

Tucker, How much simpler do you go? I have literally removed hundreds of trees with nothing more than a flip line, spurs and a chainsaw. I could put them on the ground fast. This was SOP in the time period in which I started working. We rarely set a high tie in on a removal prior to spurring up the tree. Is this the more simple approach you are talking about?

I now do use a second tie in point. If you do also, choking off the spar with your climbing line and a simple SRT descending device doesn't get much more simple than that. If you then add an ascender/descender that works on the single rope, you will have more versatility and still almost no clutter.

Dave

what I meant was I use a more simple rope set up on my way back down. Ddrt, with a split tail and a lanyard. I was referring to your climb line setup being more complex than my own.

 

[stig]

This is a GREAT thead!

Dave, that looks like a very promising set-up.
I'll be following your progress with it avidly.

Burnham, why do you think I work only with people, I've trained myself?
Because I know I can trust them.
The one time I brought in an outside climber, he almost brained me by dropping a t200 out of the tree.

 

[Underwor]

Dave, I still want to get the day of climbing with you that my hernia prevented a couple years ago. We are looking into a summer seminar session for our NDUCFA.org group. Would like to have the ability to get a more hands-on approach. I suggested you as a possible presenter. I will contact you later about it. You sure made it look easy.

By the way Burnham. I think Dave trusts his groundie pretty good. They have worked together for a long time. And she is the BCMA in the family.

 

[Burnham]

As well I know, having the pleasure of meeting at Zipfest . Dave and I have nothing on the two ladies we've respectively matched with when it comes to knowing trees.

 

[Burnham]

This is a GREAT thead!

Dave, that looks like a very promising set-up.
I'll be following your progress with it avidly.

Burnham, why do you think I work only with people, I've trained myself?
Because I know I can trust them.
The one time I brought in an outside climber, he almost brained me by dropping a t200 out of the tree.

In many cases, it's the same for me Stig. Though I've worked with a couple of older riggers and ropemen that had their stuff dialed in before we ever worked together...those are relationships worth cultivating .