What tool or method do you use to determine your elevation when in a tree?

[Tim_B.]

Hey, Jed!

When you go on Amazon looking for a particular product, if you choose a "department", like "Tools and Home Improvement" for instance, it allows you to sort the results of the search. If you sort by price, low to high, it will return all of the cheapest items that match your search first.

Here is a link to one unit I found that way. It only has two reviews so far, but you can look for others that have more reviews if you need to.

http://www.amazon.com/Andoer-Handhe...unting-fishing&ie=UTF8&qid=1421113042&sr=1-18

One thing I like to do as a prospective buyer of any item is look at the relative number of bad reviews to good reviews. If a quarter of the people who buy a product give it low marks, it might point out a problem with quality control. Also, I like to read a bunch of the worst reviews to see what the problems are. If you find a product with a large number of reviews, and very few of them are one or two star reviews, you probably have a pretty good product on your hands. Good hunting.

Tim

 

[Tim_B.]

Just be aware that it opens the other way round from everything else.
Drove me mad enough to make me give mine away.

Thanks, Stig. Yeah, I know about the difference in the direction you have to pull to get the carabiners to open. I bought a couple of the Rock Exotica Pirate Auto-Lock carabiners, I believe they were. Their appearance is markedly different from the rest of the Petzl carabiners I have, so I know as soon as I reach for it what I need to do to open it. I actually like the way the Rock Exotica carabiners open better than the Petzl ones. It just feels more natural to me.

To be brutally honest, I'm such a slow climber that even if it took me a couple of extra seconds to figure it out, it wouldn't hurt me that much. Honestly, though, I've rarely if ever felt it was an issue. The paint jobs are just so much different between the Petzl and Rock Exotica carabiners that I find it easy to distinguish them from each other.

I can only hope that some day I'll be a good enough, fast enough climber for something like this to bother the crap out of me the way it does for you. I think it's a long way off, though.


Thanks for your input.

Tim

 

[pantheraba]

Ha! Nothing wrong with slow and deliberate. Getting done safely is job one.

 

[Tim_B.]

Thanks, Gary.

Tim

 

[stig]

Thanks for assuming that I'm a fast climber.
Actually I'm just easily bothered

 

[Burnham]

We knew that...the easily bothered part, not the slow vs. fast part.

 

[Brock Mayo]

I was thinking about this the other day and decided that the stick trick should work from up in the tree looking to a point on the ground. It all comes down to how horizontal you can hold your hand with your eye? That is the part I'm not sure about, you could easily get a huge amount of error, but I think it could put you in the ball park.
So... you cut yourself a nice straight piece of limb, measure your distance on the stick like normal, turn it upside down and hold as close to horizontal as possible (might need a level taped to your arm ) sight down the bottom of your stick.

I think a climbing line, flip line, or better yet a split tail or sling made to the right length could also replace the stick because it just needs to hang down from your hand.

The only time I can think of that this could be nice is if you are working down a spar by yourself and wanting to get a rough estimate of where the tree will end up, before you commit to descending for the ground cut.

Probably not very useful to me because I usually look for that spot in the tree before I ever start the job using the normal stick trick from the ground...

 

[HolmenTree]

Lots of good discussion on this old thread about the stick trick starting on post#69
https://www.masterblasterhome.com/showthread.php?13870-My-advanced-gun-sight-technique/page7

 

[Tim_B.]

Thanks so much for chiming in with that link, Willard! I just started reading that thread where you told me to start, and in just the first few posts from your starting point are diagrams that are worth their weight in gold. Really clear, beautifully done illustrations! Thanks again!

Tim

 

[HolmenTree]

You're welcome Tim. Last evening I sat back and read the whole thread from start to finish all over again.That reminded myself how many tree guys chipped in.

It got almost a little too technical where I was explaining the guy line technique towards the end.
As Mick said "I'll have to go home and study it".

 

[Tim_B.]

Wow, saying you read the whole thread start to finish is really saying something! That thread is currently 35 pages long! I've saved it as a favorite place in my web browser, starting from your nice illustrations, and I plan on reading the whole thing myself, at some point. I believe I must have already read at least part of it in the past already, because parts of it looked familiar to me.

I'll second what Mick said.

Thanks again, Willard!

Tim

 

[MasterBlaster]

There are many threads here worth of being saved as a favorite place in your web browser.

You should save them to a TreeHouse folder!

 

[SouthSoundTree-]

Genius, Butch. I'm somewhat low-fi. Barely use bookmarks.

 

[Tim_B.]

There are many threads here worth of being saved as a favorite place in your web browser.

You should save them to a TreeHouse folder!

Yes, that is a great idea, butch. What I have is an "arborist" folder, with a bunch of sub-folders, broken down by subject. Things like "Chainsaw Related Web Pages". I can and do have more folders under that, as in "Chainsaws to Consider for Purchase". In this way, when I find some nugget of great information, I can find it again easily when I go to look for it the next time, because I tend to search for things according to their subject. Trying to find it on the entire internet can be a maddening prospect, which is the reason for the use of bookmarks.

Thanks again, Butch!

Tim

 

[MasterBlaster]