Phil
Well-Known Member
- Location
- Oak Lawn, IL
I had an interesting climb about a week ago. 90+ foot red oak with what I'm guessing is an old lightning strike. Rams horn was buckled and you could see through the tree in multiple locations. Decay was visible for a good 40' of the trunk and went into the root flair. Only targets were other trees but we wanted to get this down before a storm turned it into something much more dangerous to deal with. This is a private lot with a house located about 200' uphill from this tree. Homeowner likes the white pines so we couldn't just notch and drop from the ground. I decided I wanted to have a high line in case I needed to bail off the stem. No other nearby trees to use as a sole anchor. Plan was to dump the top part of the tree in one cut about 30-40' up. We had the room after cutting down a couple small sugar maples and all the lean was that direction. We installed a tag line to do a pull test before climbing to see/hear how the trunk was acting. Twisty but didn't make any cracking or popping noise. There was 100+ foot white pine to the left side I could use for a high anchor but it wasn't close enough for me to comfortably use as the only anchor. Too big of a swing if I had to bail. There was also another shorter pine to the right I could anchor out of. This one would dictate how high I could get with the high line. Break down of line colors:
Purple: Tag line to test trunk. was not needed for bombing the top.
Blue: 200' Climbing line going into really tall pine and basal anchored
Green: Second climbing line with a pinto pulley on the end. Was redirected through a block in the short pine and basal anchored at a tree further back to help redirect the force down the pine stem.
Red: Guy rope to help mitigate any lateral force on the smaller pine in the event I bail in to my system.
Once I installed the green and red lines in the smaller pine, I descended, put the blue rope through the pinto on the end of the green rope and drifted that out until it was in line with oak stem. Locked everything off, spiked the oak while tied into my highline (srs on the blue rope), decided not to ratchet strap the trunk on the way up, and made the cut with about 50'-60' of top. Everything went according to plan. Super smooth, descended on the high line. An hour of setup for a 2 minute cut haha.
The deviation force pic shows the general setup I was implementing. I estimated a 60 degree angle on my blue rope. Green rope was horizontal. Tree was about 16" dbh at the cut.
Purple: Tag line to test trunk. was not needed for bombing the top.
Blue: 200' Climbing line going into really tall pine and basal anchored
Green: Second climbing line with a pinto pulley on the end. Was redirected through a block in the short pine and basal anchored at a tree further back to help redirect the force down the pine stem.
Red: Guy rope to help mitigate any lateral force on the smaller pine in the event I bail in to my system.
Once I installed the green and red lines in the smaller pine, I descended, put the blue rope through the pinto on the end of the green rope and drifted that out until it was in line with oak stem. Locked everything off, spiked the oak while tied into my highline (srs on the blue rope), decided not to ratchet strap the trunk on the way up, and made the cut with about 50'-60' of top. Everything went according to plan. Super smooth, descended on the high line. An hour of setup for a 2 minute cut haha.
The deviation force pic shows the general setup I was implementing. I estimated a 60 degree angle on my blue rope. Green rope was horizontal. Tree was about 16" dbh at the cut.
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