If you had to share 1 thing.....

aaronf

aaronf

Participating member
Location
Shippensburg....maybe
So I'm getting ready to present my first virtual SRS training and I want to include as many field tips and tricks as I can from climbers all over the country who climb in all different types and sizes of trees. If you had to pick 1 SRS tip, trick, or technique to improve someone else's climb, career, or gear, what would it be?
 
Three things my crew leader taught me:
1. Never settle. Rope angle and work positioning are crucial so don’t settle for “good enough” TIP.
2. Strengthen your position. Work so each cut or move places you in position for the next cut or move.
3. If it’s not a razor it’s dull. Keep cutting tools sharp and maintained to lessen the exhaustion in the tree.
I work East Coast trees if that matters. The guys wrecking those West Coast monsters will have other insights I’m sure!
 
Use a length of rope that best suits the size of tree and the scope of work. Design your system to manage the least amount of rope. Be creative, short ropes(80-100) can be bought cheap and are extremely useful. SRT reduces the need to drag monster climbing lines through the canopy.
 
A groundie can hold an SRT tail opposite to the TIP, to prevent a swing back into the trunk in the event of a limb failure while limb-walking. Going out for end-weight reduction can cause a break that forms a spear for climber or rope.
 
I am going to send you a Pm probably sometime tomorrow. Can I assume this presentation is for the Penn-Del chapter/
 
Use a basal TIP whenever possible and tie it far away from where you intend to be cutting. Another tree trunk works best. Even on removals, if you can get a TIP in another tree close by, you can save a lot of time since there is no need to constantly reset the TIP.
 
1) You don't have to tie a basal tie at the base of the tree - try tying it at shoulder height or above to get it outa the way of any bouncing wood and brush dragging ground carnage.
2) Especially on smooth barked trees, if just using the climb line basal anchor, consider tying a choked anchor to eliminate rope ride up the trunk - see (at about 1:06:15 - Richard does a great job here):
https:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-mAHrxkPsk
3) Richard says he always carries a figure 8, I always carry a biner on my leg loop so I have an alternate means of coming down on a Munter (and if you're using a hitch to take some of the wear off it and make it last longer), plus the Munter "safety' helps strip slop and snow/ ice off a rope if I'm up in our winter weather.
 
Use at least a double tip, triangulate loading like the support of a crane boom (unless you're on a pure vertical stem), and as possible always have catch crotches or branches below your tips. It's your life in the balance.

Visualize how much drop you are willing to accept should the secondary tip or catches come into play when choosing them. Remember that a basal SRT catch is at least 4x softer than a rigid tip DRT catch.
 
If you're using a base anchor, make the end you're working on as short as possible for the work. If you're not doing any redirects, make it just touch the ground. This makes less work for you when climbing over branches since you don't have to pull as much rope through, and it makes it safer since your rope wont reach the chipper.

If you're using a cinching canopy anchor, leave the retrieval strand pretty short, like ten feet or less. If you're chunking wood down make it just long enough that you can reach it from where you'll make your next cut. If you're just going to rap down to the ground, tie your rigging line to the retrieval end and yank on the rigging line when you hit the deck.
 
Bart_ said:
Use at least a double tip, triangulate loading like the support of a crane boom (unless you're on a pure vertical stem), and as possible always have catch crotches or branches below your tips. It's your life in the balance.

Visualize how much drop you are willing to accept should the secondary tip or catches come into play when choosing them. Remember that a basal SRT catch is at least 4x softer than a rigid tip DRT catch.
Click to expand...
To pass on some wisdom from @Tony from another thread on anchors, " a shit anchor is a shit anchor...if you dont trust it, why (the f) are you climbing on it?"

I'm all in favor of 2 ropes and multiple supports, it helps in a wide range of situations. And I can understand having a base anchored system over more than one branch or crotch (not isolated). But a "catch crotch" does not factor into my climbing because I am not willing to accept ANY drop! Is this meant to theorize how 2 separate climbing systems and 2 tips would work to prevent a fall out of the tree in the event of a tip failure?

I think B strange got it right first. Dont settle for a sketchy, bad TIP. If there are limited options, do some problem solving to properly support the climber load *before* anything breaks.
 
To explain the wisdom: Smaller anchors are an option opened up by using redundancy, which otherwise you might refer to as "you're crazy for climbing on that shit anchor!"

Sketchy access is enabled by redundancy.

You don't use a sketchy bad tip, you use a combined tip system - the fundamental difference in thought when you don't settle for an all your eggs in one basket life/career ending fail/fail possibility.

Call it the more conservative, safer approach. Statistics, the unknown/unpredictable, etc... Come out of a statistical inevitability in one piece - a proactive plan to ensure that's always the case. This is the nature of this problem solving. Think of the DRT fall stories you know.

It takes a little pondering outside traditional DRT mindset. If you try to view it as "a tip(anchor)" you haven't grasped it.

In case there's a basic misunderstanding, 2 tips means you fire your throw line through two crotches often nearly the same height, sometimes on adjacent leaders, though that's not always possible. A catch crotch or branch may be 4x the size of the tip crotch if you're in a 2" crotch higher up and it is your guarantee of not hitting the deck should statistics strike. That said I've only once dropped about 3' off a crap stub to a catch crotch during ascent. I knew a priori the stub was a non issue. I appreciate the peace of mind it gives.
 
Bart_ said:
To explain the wisdom: Smaller anchors are an option opened up by using redundancy, which otherwise you might refer to as "you're crazy for climbing on that shit anchor!"

Sketchy access is enabled by redundancy.

You don't use a sketchy bad tip, you use a combined tip system - the fundamental difference in thought when you don't settle for an all your eggs in one basket life/career ending fail/fail possibility.

Call it the more conservative, safer approach. Statistics, the unknown/unpredictable, etc... Come out of a statistical inevitability in one piece - a proactive plan to ensure that's always the case. This is the nature of this problem solving. Think of the DRT fall stories you know.

It takes a little pondering outside traditional DRT mindset. If you try to view it as "a tip(anchor)" you haven't grasped it.

In case there's a basic misunderstanding, 2 tips means you fire your throw line through two crotches often nearly the same height, sometimes on adjacent leaders, though that's not always possible. A catch crotch or branch may be 4x the size of the tip crotch if you're in a 2" crotch higher up and it is your guarantee of not hitting the deck should statistics strike. That said I've only once dropped about 3' off a crap stub to a catch crotch during ascent. I knew a priori the stub was a non issue. I appreciate the peace of mind it gives.
Click to expand...
For basal anchors there should be terms for things like the last crotch that a climber uses on the ascent side, or the last crotch on the anchor side, whether the highest point is on the ascent side, anchor side, or the middle, etc, etc. Mostly me being a little too anal, but it might help with some of these type of descriptions.
 
One thing I really noticed that changed when I switched to srs is planning. I found it a lot easier to think of how I could plan my climb from the top down so I could incorporate natural crotch redirects and have my "tip" above me. Of course this only really works with basal anchors.
 
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1) Whenever possible, throw from the side the majority of your work is on. When you pull the throw line (and rope) back through the tree towards your work, you can minimize the length of the tail that you'll have to manage beneath you. Then, of course, you'll need to make your base-tie midline (as with a butterfly and quickie).
2) Keep the tools for a quick-and-dirty 3-to-1 with you...you never know when you're going to end up at an angle when hand-over-hand isn't feasible and the foot ascender is useless.
3) Talk about how to add a stopper knot at your hitch-based climbing system for pulling it through a new TIP up above you (and then compare the process to how efficient using a midline-detachable device can be for re-crotching or natural redirects).
4) Emphasize how much of the work your arms DON'T need to do...get the focus on big muscles, all legs, and just use the arms to keep vertical.
5) KEEP VERTICAL when ascending. It's so unnatural for a DdRT climber, but it's SO worth it.
 
My only advice. Keep it simple stupid. SRT opens up a huge range of options that can make things so complicated it’s utterly dangerous or at best unproductive.

I personally base tie nearly 100% of the time when on SRT. I skip all the fancy base anchor stuff ( I have my defensible rational) and just tie with a backed up running bowline, and a alpine a few feet up.
 
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