This has concerned me before, and this thread brought it again to my mind. It looks lumpy in that area, so I'm wondering what an internal failure at this point would look like as compared with the normal lumpiness.
Are you saying that a tube with wall cross sectional area = X is stronger than a solid cylinder with cross sectional area = X? That makes sense, if so.
I initially read this as a tube with diameter = X is stronger than the same diameter tube with the center hollowed out. That would be very...
Is it absolutely necessary that, leading up to this failure, the bridge had some sort of lumpiness to it, where the inner strands had begun successively failing? Or is it possible that this very old bridge did indeed go from ratty-looking to every single stand failing in a cascade, more or less...
Just a joke!
Edit: I deal with a certain baseline level of fear of heights (I know this because I know people who aren't afraid of heights, and...I'm not like them). I started having jaw pain when I first started climbing, and realized that it was because I was constantly clenching my teeth...
This. Confidence-inspiring. Edit: Even just a hundred pounds of side-load from a horizontal pull line would likely be more than you could apply without some major jumping around and limb-walking far out.
@climbingmonkey24, does your discomfort persist after you've dropped your bodyweight's...
Would it be possible to have another climber you respect come out and get their opinion on the tree AND/OR simply be there to watch you climb?
I'm nowhere near as far along as you in my treework/climbing CV, but I know that one thing which helps me immensely is having a climber on site, on the...
This is something I've wondered about: if a swing is anchored with a cinching knot of some kind, will the limb/trunk still be able to grow underneath and the cinch simply expand to accommodate the increased diameter without causing damage?
@climbingmonkey24 Thanks for the drawings! Excellent. Apologies for making you go through all that - that's what I call double-whipping. Use it a lot, even without the pulley, for smaller stuff (it still effectively halves the load).
The 'gotcha' with that system, at least for me, is that...
Yeah, I've done that before, except with porty in tree.
These were some larger pieces that I wanted to allow to run, however (porty not locked off, take several wraps, enough that I know it'll stop before hitting ground, but will run a little when the initial load hits it).
I'd never had an alpine butterfly lock up until the first time I tried this technique (using the whole rigging line up by sequentially rigging and lowering pieces along its length). Had to use the vice grips to break the knot afterwards.
Could work in that application, I suppose, where it's not being loaded from both tails. Bowline WITH a bight would work too, but would consume more line than BoaB and AB.
"Clear" = bring it back to you? Or, clear it out from getting stuck under brush? Can you describe this setup, when you have time?
This is one of the most painful parts of me doing solo work - if you have opportunity, can you describe your setup? I've taken to using a longer rigging rope...