I am going to point out a few things that could have been done better, IMHO. Muscle memory and repetition of actions done correctly are strong and potentially life-saving habits. Even though you were setting a non life support rope, I would have preferred seeing that bowline dressed and set much more deliberately, out of habit.
You went through the trouble of setting a pull line for the top but thought it unnecessary to use it as a safety for the spur climb. A missed opportunity in the safety department regardless of how comfortable you are on spurs.
After you reached the first limb, you choked off your climbing line in a DdRT configuration under the limb. A better choice would have been to set it above the union. Simply doing so would have given you more options if the need arose.
Everyone in the business by now should be aware of the quality and usefulness of the available helmet communication systems currently on the market. They are as potent a safety aide as a hard hat.
I am not trying to win any safety police merit badges with this post, it is just that all your other postings are so good and thorough, with a strong training base, that these omissions jumped out at me.
DMc, first of all, much respect. I greatly respect the opinions of my elders in this trade. I acknowledge that I am still, in many respects, a total greenhorn, and I hope to always consider myself in need of training.
I would first point out that I totally agree with you, things could ALWAYS have been done better, in this video, and most likely, in every other video out there. This isn't an ISA video after all. This is not some staged thing that I wanted to post to show everyone else how they should be doing things. I am not trying to show anyone else a better way of working, I am simply trying to show my apprentice how to get stuff done in the field, when it matters, and I thought it might be entertaining to show it to all of you at the same time. That being said, I am hoping to clear up a few things:
1. I am wondering when it became unsafe to spur up a tree with just a lanyard, I wasn't aware of that change in safety policy.
2. I was just spurring up 30 ft and coming down, I'm not sure why I would have needed to set some kind of advanced climbing anchor up top for my climbing line. I am, by nature, a climbing minimalist, I want to use the least amount of gear that gets the job done.
3. Helmet-based comm. systems are amazing, I totally agree with you, I should try to integrate some of that technology into my old-school aluminum hat. The absence of such a system does not, in and of itself, mean that anything I do is inherently unsafe.
If the safety police are that concerned with my work practices, they should consider themselves lucky that I didn't film how I descended from that tree - a munter hitch on that tag-line that I was using to pull over the spar - it being my old climb line that I use only for light-duty rigging purposes. As I was told in a seminar years ago - climbing lines and rigging lines are like wives and girlfriends - may they never meet. Keep in mind that I would never do that on a line if I didn't know the history of it, nor would I teach that technique to anyone who was unaware of the potential risks.
When I said on my website that "I am not “Captain Safety” as so many of the authorities in the trade purport to be. I am an actual, working, production arborist and tree climber", what I meant was not that I am unsafe in my work practices, but rather that my opinion has always been that
nobody is more concerned about your own safety than you are.
Again, I am truly thankful for any and all feedback, it is amazing to interact with other professionals, many of whom have far more experience than I do. I am thankful for the opportunity, and this forum is an amazing way of sharing. I have a lot more videos in the works and I plan to continue sharing them. I make them for my apprentice but if anyone else can benefit, then I am very happy.
I don't write any of this to stir up controversy, I have been aware of the safety police brigade on forums since my first post back in 2009 about the Daisy Chain hitch, which is still not an "approved" knot, and yet I use it everyday. And those same people are still teaching the clove hitch with 2 half hitches to new recruits, makes me wonder...
A bit more about me, from my website;
My thoughts on the Clove hitch
Cheers,