Augsburg is a good show.
What started out as a run of the mill arb con has grown with the Kletterforum (Climbers' forum) to one of the largest climbers meetings.
Initially all talks were in the hall, demos taking place on a rig trying to be a tree (see attachment). Last year, also due to the later date (end of April instead of end of March), we were able to use the trees out in the park for demos. Apart from the fact that it always seems to rain whenever I'm anywhere near the place it's good to have both possibilities, indoor talks and presentations and outdoor hands-on demos.
One of the topics we decided would be interesting to tackle this year is the whole certification and standard creating process. The european temporary work at height directive, a piece of euro legislation affecting all high angle activities, demands a double safety at all times... difficult in a tree. In the UK there has been a very active debate involving an industry review process how this directive applies to the arb industry. Treevolution, a UK training company, played an important part in this... so it's great that Liam McEwen will be over to talk about that.
I asked Tom to talk about comparable legislation and processes in the States. I appreciate him coming all this way... and - to crown it all - he'll get dragged off to the ETCC.
Knut Foppe will be highlighting the differences between industrial rope access and the arb industry, showing - amongst other things - why a double safety is feasible and standard practice in the former and not in our application.
Kai Busemann has been doing some work on the certifiability of friction hitches. It seems like things have moved forwards on this front... I'm quite excited about this. Stay tunded for more.
We've got on or two surprises lurking round the corner, wouldn't want to spoil your fun...we'll see if it comes off.
I'll be doing something with Chris Cowell on work safety targets, an update on last year's karabiner thangg and configuration talk and some other stuff. Do I feel prepared? Nahhhh... running scared actually, tidying up after some really heavy wet snow we had three weeks ago. I've never seen such extensive damage to trees before. We are - literally - snowed under with work!
