Safe techniques for tying into the crane ball

[cory]

Was doing a huge 55t crane/bucket job taking out 5 trees yesterday, hose blew in upper boom of 75' lift at 11am, freaking elderly climber (moi) had to finish the trees by climbing ( we were shorthanded cuz my climber quit due to inadequate work hours cuz things are slow, can't blame him of course but it sucks).

I did adequately well but am not happy with part of my technique. As we know, more than once folks have tied into the ball and been lifted off the ground (in my case tying into a ring above the ball) and when they went to rapell a bit, their rope came untied (due to mental error) causing a fall. One obvious solution is to tie into the ring above the ball and then lanyard into the hook. But the problem with that imo is you can't rappel much at all with your lanyard in the hook so if you un-lanyard to rappel, the same thing could happen ( a fall due to mental error with your friction device/hitch).

So I would like a way to lanyard into the round sling which is hanging from the hook thus allowing more freedom of descent while still being tied in twice. The idea being that after I've rapelled several feet down the length of the sling, I can have full faith in my friction device etc and then un-lanyard with confidence and get to work in the canopy.

My idea is some knot or hitch that would be tied loose enough around the round sling to allow descent but if a sudden drop occurred, it would lock down onto the sling preventing a fall.

Thoughts?

 

[lumberjack]

I don’t understand mental error causing a fall from a crane tip being different than the same error in the tree?

 

[cory]

It happened to Paul cox for example.

In the tree, if you are climbing from the ground up with double lanyard technique, (your climbing line serving as one of the lanyards), you have multiple opportunities to test the connection. With the crane, you walk up to the ball, tie in and away you go. There’s no working of the hitch until you are floating above the canopy ready to rappel down into it. Lanyarding to the hook only allows a few inches of movement instead of 4-15’ of movement depending on sling length, if you were lanyarded to the sling.
Maybe something like a munter hitch idea

 

[cory]

And closely checking one’s attachment point etc before being lifted is of course a must-do, but mistakes happen.
Tying into the hook is way better than nothing but it seems not fully adequate

 

[Kaveman]

Tree climbing= non redundant, single point tie in. Lanyard for positioning and "backup".

I guess you could always run two climb lines and devices, that would solve your issue fairly well.

 

[lxskllr]

I don't know how a crane gig works, but what about two lines? Both mrs. One through a ring above the ball, and one through the hook. Loosen from the hook til you're sure your setup's good, completely free it by removing the anchor from your bridge, rappel down to the tree, lanyard in, then free the rope from above the ball by removing the bridge anchor.

 

[friedrich]

i will ride with the hooks near my feet and sometimes clip into the chains for the fuzzy feeling of safety. also i will pay out line (so i ride where i wanne be) and it‘s easy to weight your tip without full commitment.

lawrence schultz has a video about using a second srt system in the tree for cranework.
works really well for me.

 

[Dave Shepard]

What I saw was climbing line in the master link, which is technically the only ok tie-in. Then lanyard went through the round sling.

 

[cory]

What I saw was climbing line in the master link, which is technically the only ok tie-in. Then lanyard went through the round sling.

Yes that's what I tie into the master link. But if I lanyard thru the round sling, should a drop occur, the sudden stop when lanyard hits the bottom of the sling would probably kill you.

 

[Altissimus]

With the exclaimer of neva used a Crane but ...,I often use a short hank and go old school taut line hitch and a minder pulley in smaller tops in addition to my flip lines so ,

 

[pigwot]

I tend to use a motion lanyard (30 ft system with friction hitch or mechanical) as my second tie-in. I’ll keep it mostly daisy-chained unless things are looking sketchy when I will strip out extra ‘insurance’ length. Allows for extra length to play with / rappel with.

 

[cory]

Good stuff, so that allows you to rappel a fair amount while still being lanyarded into the bulletproof hook.