Addressing hitch binding with the Rope Wrench on descent

rico said:
I have been dailing in my super cool, shiny new Haas and Powersender setup, and all I got to say is Holy Shit! I always thought you Rope & Wrench Walking, SRT Slinging Arborists were a bunch of soft sissy’s, but now it’s been oficially confirmed. This ain’t work.
Seriously though, this is a game changer for me, and will allow me to stay productive for a very long time. I want to give a shout out to all the very knowledgeable people here for all their help and advice. This place has been an amazing resource for an aging, older climber like myself. Thanks.
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These words made my day. I am an old dog and learned new tricks. Nice you could too. SRT makes our bodies feel like 20 years old again.
 
rico said:
I have been dailing in my super cool, shiny new Haas and Powersender setup, and all I got to say is Holy Shit! I always thought you Rope & Wrench Walking, SRT Slinging Arborists were a bunch of soft sissy’s, but now it’s been oficially confirmed. This ain’t work.
Seriously though, this is a game changer for me, and will allow me to stay productive for a very long time. I want to give a shout out to all the very knowledgeable people here for all their help and advice. This place has been an amazing resource for an aging, older climber like myself. Thanks.
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I made the switch after listening to the old dogs here. When they said “I’d would have been able to do this a lot longer if I made the switch sooner”. When the grey hairs speak you better listen up
 
evo said:
I made the switch after listening to the old dogs here. When they said “I’d would have been able to do this a lot longer if I made the switch sooner”. When the grey hairs speak you better listen up
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Maybe we should start an Old Guys, Grey Pubes Climbers Club here. We could bond, talk about how badass we were back in the day, and discuss the latest advancements in adult diapers, the importance of proper bowel and bladder control while aloft, reverse home mortgages, the evils of low testosterone, and the safe use of opiates to dull all the never ending pain. I'm in.
 
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I have had the pleasure of having Kevin up to my place years ago during the development of the Wrench and I still have a couple I fabricated out of walnut and lignum vitae with his instruction. Still having fun using the present version! Thanks for the innovation!
 
You might try a shorter hitch cord. The longer legs don't feed back into the hitch each time you ascend, so the wraps tend to tighten with repeated cycles of up and down.
The Matt Cornell hitch works good, and with real short legs, can be used alone on SRT.
 
I am no doubt the least experienced guy on this board, but I am about 230 with gear and I have found good success with a 28" 10mm cord. For me the small stuff would jam up big time.
 
Anytime I try 28”+ hitch cord it slips or doesn’t want to grab so I just use 26” now. It’s really really tight trying to tie a 4/1 michoacan but once u get it and break it in it gets much easier and works perfect for me.
 
I'm 160lb. I alternate between 8mm beeline, 8mm OP, and 9mm Sterling RIT all 26" with a wrench and 7/16 HTP. I love all 3, but I got to say I'm partial to the RIT. In michoacan, I find myself using a 6/1 with the beeline, 5/1 or 6/1 with the OP and 5/1 with the RIT, I can't find a sweet spot with the 10mm cord. HRC didn't work for me either, but it's great in a VT on my lanyard. As far as binding, the 26" solved most of my issue, but so did going to a super-stiff tether. When I go 5/1 with 8mm cord, I have to take the tails around the rope and cross to take a little slack out.
 
[There's a question buried below, for the perseverant.]
I am now the least-experienced "climber" on this board, unless someone else made their first climb since 6 pm this evening.

I just got my leaden 60-something self 6 feet off of mother earth. "Houston calling Spaceman Oertl." on a Rope Wrench with RopeLogic short tether, using a 5-turn Michoacan and a Hitch Climber pulley. I've read and watched for over six months while I ordered pieces here and there and waited for arrival. Having put them all together today, I alternated between having my chest connector (simple sling over shoulders, crossed in back) too long and leaning so far back I couldn't reach above the Rope Wrench and, after going to a much tighter one, having my saddle too low so that I was near strangled when trying to sit down. (I was trying to implement a sling bridge at the same time, and finally gave up on that idea for now and just connected my front saddle rings to the same location as the chest carabiner.)

...and then it hit me: I wonder if my saddle might be incompatible with this type of setup. It's a bumptious Weaver 4-Dee Model 1033 from 2011, leather and nylon web constuction. There are two sets of rings, one pair on the side, for a lanyard, and a pair in front and up that come together and touch, for ascending/descending. I first tried to use the side rings for a bridge, but my hips were compressed when I sat. I tried to use the front rings, but there wasn't much "bridge" after getting the seat high enough to permit me to reach above the Rope Wrench. I finally just clipped the front Ds into the hitch climber pulley with the chest connector.

I did manage to get everything adjusted to allow me to climb in a vaguely similar way to the stars of the videos, and I wasn't exhausted after my long six-foot climb. I particular enjoyed being able to stop and rest every 12 inches. I never could do that with spurs because I was always afraid they'd kick out and I'd be shearing bark with my front teeth all the way down. The added swaying was pure gravy. I'd have gone higher, but that's where the branch was.

My question is: Is anyone climbing on one of these "classic" saddles? And is it possible to make a bridge for one? If so I'd like to hear from you. I can't really justify getting something different: this one has fewer than 180 minutes' "wear." (I obviously don't have enough "experience" to "need" the mobility of a bridge, but I'd like to practice on a system I'd like to use.)

I thoroughly enjoyed the ascents to six feet and back: the ants looked like ants from that height. However, I didn't realize I'd encounter so many mosquitos at that altitude.

Adding this for other new climbers: I didn't find a lot of detailed closeup video about descending. For quite a while, I was convinced that the Rope Wrench was "locked" and preventing descent. [EDIT: It is important to know that THE ROPE WRENCH DOES NOT/CANNOT LOCK THE SYSTEM INTO A FIXED POSITION, as it might appear at first look, and as pointed out below.] I finally did manage to trust the instruction about grasping as many coils of the hitch as possible and pulling it down, but it took more force than I expected, after which I suddenly learned that the Rope Wrench really wasn't holding me up. I also quickly learned that speed could get away from me too. Later I remembered people holding the below-rope out to one side to help control the speed. With more practice and knowing what to expect, I could get down quicker and smoother. (Of course the first time I also descended right onto the top of my knee ascender, which I'd forgotten to take off, and then also had to climb back up to retrieve my two-handled ascender which I'd also forgotten.)

But it was a good climb. Tomorrow, if mother's able to pitch it up higher, I'm going to see what the world looks like from ten feet. (Or even turn it up to eleven.)

Thanks, TreeBuzz. You've inspire a lot more dreamers I'm sure.
 
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Listen to me brother .... and yes I read your whole post ..... multiple times. Us buzzers are going to take care of you, but you gotta trust us .... deal???? The saddle is not the issue. SRT requires quite a bit of knowledge and tuning, but we all asume that you've had some DDRT time, which you may not have.

So here we go ... and please stick around on the board no matter what I say ... if I'm wrong then beat the crap of me ................... but .................... you're on the right track and keep going .................. but I don't think you completely understand your setup.

Most of us started out double rope so we had the LUXURY (and I repeat LUXURY, LUXURIOUS, LAY BACK AND ROCK BABY) of getting to know our CLIMBING HITCH and rope forces. Your moving straight on to the next step with SRT. Please understand that SRT is an advanced technique, if nothing more than physical. That wrench itself IS NOT LIFE SUPPORT and will not hold or provide enough friction to keep you stationary or "locked" on the climb line. The COILED HITCH IS YOUR LIFE SUPPORT so choose some good heat resitant technora fiber sheath hitch cord like bee line, ocean polyester, epicord, etc for your hitch cord. If you have a beer and just dream a litlle and go to your happy place and think a little on that last last statement ...... and do some more reading out her on the buzz ......... it will all come to you. Stick with it brother, but PLEASE know your equipment .... and stay less than 6 feet off the ground until you can laugh a little at what I just said. Climb on brother.

Please PM me and we can even get on the phone if you want.
 
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And by the way, Stevie Nick's "Edge of Seventeen" live from the Bella Donna tour (on YouTube) is good thinking music should you need it. And yes, she's the sexiest woman on the planet.
 
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@Birdyman88 Firstly, thank you! Secondly, let me assure you that I never thought of the Rope Wrench as life support--I've read plenty, plenty, plenty to know that the hitch is the thing. However, what I was trying to say was that I was pulling down on the hitch, the way I saw it in the video--and nothing was moving.

I'd better add a "thirdly" in here to say that, before I ever hooked into a saddle ring, I had hung the equipment on a rope suspended from the ceiling and experimented with the setup. I could see that as the pulley went up it released the hitch and pushed it up with it, and that the tether made the Wrench go into "neutral" (as the company names it) and it went up too, and that when I stopped and pulled down on the pulley, simulating my weight, the hitch locked. What I was saying was that for the longest time I could not pull the hitch down.

I went back to the photos and descriptions to check that I had everything hooked up the same way. Check. I thought I was pulling down "pretty hard" on the hitch, but nothing was moving, and I had no experience with "how much" friction the Wrench was going to supply, so I had begun to wonder if I had, perhaps too big a diameter hitch cord, or too many turns in the hitch, or if, say, I needed to put hold my hand a certain way? Finally, I discovered that I wasn't pulling down hard enough on the hitch to get it moving. Again, not something that can be learned from pictures. But the fact that it DID release in the experiment encouraged me that the setup was working the way it was supposed to and I moved on to trying myself in it from a low branch.

The other confusion did in fact arise from me not having a saddle like the ones in the pictures, and trying to use a sling as a chest harness as some do, but mostly from trying to jump straight to a bridge setup without having even been suspended once. By the time I'd practiced a few hours with things in adjustment, I did have a much, much better feel for how it was going to work.

The motivation for SRT for me is simple: I want to step up the rope. Today I learned that I can do it and it's not going to leave me exhausted. Of course getting into the tree is just the beginning. I'll still have to learn how to move about, let alone how to work.
 
I understand, keep reading though, I promise, promise,promise the issue is not the saddle. I have climbed SRT on two completely different saddles ..... but ...... I absolutely understand my hitch and everything last little nuance. If you're binding and can't figure it out .... trust me ..... do some DDRT and see if you don't understand then. You've done the reading ...........but ......... there's a lot of hands on that ALL OF US had to get through. You'll get there. There's knowing, and then there' KNOWING, if you know what I mean. We've all gone through it. KNOW YOUR HITCH. Climb on brother.
 
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