Best $25. I spent in a long time.

S

Shadowscape

Been here a while
Location
far north
A few years ago, I got talked into buying a screamer. Don't ask me why I bought one as I had zero use for one, but I did. It has sat in a bag unseen for a long time.
Today I finally got to climb a white pine I have been wanting to climb for about 40 years. It is in the Chippawa National Forest. About 140', single stalk with zero branches for the first 100'. Then it is a dense lion tail thing going on up there. As the National Forest is somewhat picky about damage to their trees it was strictly a rope climb. I tried to scope out a good limb to set my anchor rope over but couldn't see much of anything in there, even with the binoculars I brought along. I shot my throw bag through the mass of green where I figured it to be over a good solid limb. Pulled the anchor rope through and reversed it to pull my MRS up on a pulley. I like to run the anchor rope through a Petzl rig. Force of habit. I tugged on the MRS and jumped on it as best I could and it seemed solid, but I felt uncomfortable not knowing what the rope was really hanging on. So just as a safety measure I added that screamer to the bottom of the Rig. When I finally reached the first branches, I swung out from the stem to get my ropes free from a stub. Bam! My body smacked into the trunk hard. I mean hard, like I had been hit by a truck. Turns out my line was just over a small branch and it snapped. I'm guessing I dropped about 5 to 7 feet. I have two cracked ribs and broke the pinky finger on my left hand. But all that damage was from hitting the trunk. The fall was of little consequence to the operation. That 25 dollar screamer stripped the webbing full out. If I remember correctly (and that is iffy these days) they let go at about 500 pounds. I can't imagine what shape I would be in had I not decided on a whim to put that inline. Do believe I will get myself another one of those soon. I still have that tree to climb because that incident terminated my attempt for today, and for the next several weeks until I heal. By then it will be too cold and will have to wait until spring.
 
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Shadowscape said:
A few years ago, I got talked into buying a screamer. Don't ask me why I bought one as I had zero use for one, but I did. It has sat in a bag unseen for a long time.
Today I finally got to climb a white pine I have been wanting to climb for about 40 years. It is in the Chippawa National Forest. About 140', single stalk with zero branches for the first 100'. Then it is a dense lion tail thing going on up there. As the National Forest is somewhat picky about damage to their trees it was strictly a rope climb. I tried to scope out a good limb to set my anchor rope over but couldn't see much of anything in there, even with the binoculars I brought along. I shot my throw bag through the mass of green where I figured it to be over a good solid limb. Pulled the anchor rope through and reversed it to pull my MRS up on a pulley. I like to run the anchor rope through a Petzl rig. Force of habit. I tugged on the MRS and jumped on it as best I could and it seemed solid, but I felt uncomfortable not knowing what the rope was really hanging on. So just as a safety measure I added that screamer to the bottom of the Rig. When I finally reached the first branches, I swung out from the stem to get my ropes free from a stub. Bam! My body smacked into the trunk hard. I mean hard, like I had been hit by a truck. Turns out my line was just over a small branch and it snapped. I'm guessing I dropped about 5 to 7 feet. I have two cracked ribs and broken the pinky on my left hand. But all that damage was from hitting the trunk. The fall was of little consequence to the operation. That 25 dollar screamer stripped the webbing full out. If I remember correctly (and that is iffy these days) they let go at about 500 pounds. I can't imagine what shape I would be in had I not decided on a whim to put that inline. Do believe I will get myself another one of those soon. I still have that tree to climb because that incident terminated my attempt for today, and for the next several weeks until I heal. By then it will be too cold and will have to wait until spring.
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Damnit, I guess I should pick one up now. Too many times have I found myself amazed at that little nub that held my ass swinging around till I got up to my tip to pop it with my palm.
 
Sorry to hear about your injuries. I'm a bit surprised on the severity of your falls impact with over 100' of rope in the system. What rope were you using?
 
In my experience, there are 2 important things to think about with basal anchor falls:

a) you fall twice as far as you might think. For example, if your rope is caught on a small twig that is 2 ft above a good crotch, you might look up there and think "well, if that twig breaks, I'm only falling 2 ft down into that bigger crotch." But in reality, you will fall 2 ft on the front side, plus 2 ft on the backside. Every fall like this is double the distance that it looks.

b) because it's natural crotches, you're not getting nearly as much stretch out of the down rope as you might hope for. For example, if you have 100 ft of rope on the down side, and you take a fall at the 50 ft mark, you might be tempted to count it all as having 150ft of rope in the system to absorb that shock. But one of the main points that has been made about natural crotch rigging forever is that you can't count nearly all of that rope on the backside as being "in" that system to help stretch and absorb that load. Most of the available stretch is only on the front side, from the crotch to the load. This would be totally different if we were using a good block or pulley up top.
 
@Shadowscape so sorry to hear about your fall and injury. I’m glad it wasn’t more severe, but still, yikes.

Could someone give me a quick screamer 101? I’ve only heard very peripherally about what it is and why to use it.
 
True on the distance fallen being more than say a canopy tied anchor. The plus side to a base tie is that you are not dependent upon a single isolated tie-in-point so you do not come completely out of the tree.

From my experience with dropping from small dead branches, unknowingly captured when setting a base-tie, the branch friction that decreases fully loading the base leg, comes on progressively as the applied load increases over a given length, additionally softening impact, not unlike the screamer itself does.
 
Glad your not too bad, doesn't sound fun at all. Thanks for the story. Always disliked adding "links" to systems, but in this case....using "screamers" hopefully mitigated some of the bodily damage. Screamers,@Stumpsprouts , from what I looked up, are basically the fat part of a fall arrest lanyard, like you would use for dorsal attachment in a bucket truck. To use, connect inline with main life support line....If this is wrong let me know.
 
RogerM said:
Glad your not too bad, doesn't sound fun at all. Thanks for the story. Always disliked adding "links" to systems, but in this case....using "screamers" hopefully mitigated some of the bodily damage. Screamers,@Stumpsprouts , from what I looked up, are basically the fat part of a fall arrest lanyard, like you would use for dorsal attachment in a bucket truck. To use, connect inline with main life support line....If this is wrong let me know.
Click to expand...
I was guessing that it was more like an "ART SnakeAnchor" ? But those aren't $25 !

I forget what load the stitched segments are designed to break at during a fall ?
 
RogerM said:
Glad your not too bad, doesn't sound fun at all. Thanks for the story. Always disliked adding "links" to systems, but in this case....using "screamers" hopefully mitigated some of the bodily damage. Screamers,@Stumpsprouts , from what I looked up, are basically the fat part of a fall arrest lanyard, like you would use for dorsal attachment in a bucket truck. To use, connect inline with main life support line....If this is wrong let me know.
Click to expand...
I agree about adding links to the system, but personally I have an open unused alpine on my base anchor side. This is for just incase a rescue line is needed. Not a link just a knot.
Now with a screamer, one just needs a long belly and a second alpine, clip the screamer between the two.
Added stuff for sure but not a ‘link’ and it’s backed up with the climb line itself
 
Man, just this week I had a first experience of a similar nature, wherein the branch I was going out on, positioning lanyard hooked on, getting ready to make a cut, and I let out a little more length on my main climb line putting too much weight on the branch and having it totally break off. It was 4-5" at the base, Sycamore, and totally healthy and solid. It must have weighed a little under 200 lbs. and stayed hung up on my lanyard. I didn't have time to feel scared; it just kinda happened and was over. I was glad I hadn't tied in the one fork higher; I don't think it would have held all that force. Scary stuff man, I'm glad you're in good enough shape to tell us about it.
 
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