Isolating a limb

Tom Dunlap

Tom Dunlap

Here from the beginning
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Retired in Minneapolis
Today I went rec climbing with Harv. There is a nice Ponderosa Pine in a park near his place. I named it "Little Joe" I got my throwline into the tree. The line went through the upper canopy and down one side of a good access limb.

Now the struggle started. The line came down directly above the limb. After tying on my climbing line to the end of the throwline I hoisted it up. I couldn't get the throwball to pull the eye of the rope over the limb far enough to allow the rope to stick on the limb and have the throwball drop. If the throwline were coming down a little off-center I could have gotten things squared away.

Since the crown was so thick I didn't want to clear the other end through the branches.

At some comps I've seen some fancy throwline tricks. Since most of the times I've had a scoresheet in my hand I couldn't pay attention to the details. Does anyone have any tricks to share?
 
I'll see if I can attach a graphic.

Note that I can't pull the throwline up and over the first limb. If I did there would be no way to bounce or swing it back down on the left side of the first limb, just where the climbing line is hoisted.
 

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Tom, I can't read your labels on the graphic but, The first thing that occurred to me was to tie a throwbag to the tail of the throwline and hoist it and drop past your interfering limb then try to hoist your line up overthe target limb and drop the bag as a seperate step.
 
I'm just learning how to use Paint. I think the current pic is a bit clearer.

I caouldn't pull the throwline on the right up because I would risk jamming it in the canopy limbs. The route of the throwline can't be changed.

If there is a bit more offset from the first limb on the lower left and the one above the double overhand would flop over and lay there in about the one o'clock postion and the bag would drop clean. I've had this happend before and I know there is a clever solution.
 
Tom ,

I'm not axactly sure what your talking about. But I think I get the picture. Doesn't sound as though it was a huge tree if you threw a line over the canopy.If that was the case, it can be manipulated from the ground with two lines.Attached is an example:

what I do when I cant quite isolate a limb is to send up another trowline . But in some cases I'll take off the main thowbag and attach with a small biner.Also the small blue biner you see in there is replaced with a small screw link biner that the throw bag wont pull through. If I think the bag will pull through , I attach a small biner to the ring on the secoundary bag which will then become the primary set throwline.

Maybe this is what your looking for ?

Thanks
Greg
 

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That might be the way to go. I didn't take a lot of time to think through the options yesterday. After muddling around for a little while I just pulled the line and threw again. the tree actually had lots of good sets in it. But there's always that time when the set is soooo close :)

I'll tuck this away in the hairy computer for the next time.

Thanks!
 
Greg's and Wolter's suggestions are variations of the same idea. You could also tie a second throwline to the throwweight instead of attaching the climbing line, pull it from left to right and let it drop over whichever branch you desire. If you did this I would just attach the two throwlines by clipping a steel biner to the throwweight at each of the line ends. There will be extra friction because there will be two throwlines coming down over two limbs and this will sometimes create enough friction that one throwweight won't come down.

You can also use concept this to isolate two limbs with one toss of the throwline.

These and other throwline tricks were shown in Arborist News, April and June, 2001. The articles were titled 'Slick Tricks' and 'More Slick Tricks'.

Mahk
 
Tom,
Sorry I can’t offer any help… too new. But I do have a question… or two… or three.

If all had gone as hoped (the eye end stayed and the bag dropped on the other side of the limb), was your intent to bring the other end of the climbing line up through the eye as your tie-in point?

Would you have re-tied the line once you got up in the tree or used another line for moving around in the tree?

Were you using SRT?

Sorry for so many questions… just very curious.


Thanks,
Jim
 
Stick trick

Great questions!

If my rope end hand jumped over the limb and stayed I would have used the "Stick trick" to retrieve the end. In the illustration, the blue line is my climbing line, red is the throwline and the black loop on the right is a LOCKING biner or screw link.

The throwline is dropped to the ground, black arrows, and the ends are tied together. A locking biner or screw link is girth hitched to the throwline. then, the throwline is pulled into the tree and threaded through the limbs until it catches on the climbing line. the climbing line has a tight double fisherman's loop tied on it so the biner/link is caught. If the biner catches on something as it's being pulled through the canopy you can jiggle it back and forth because you have it in a loop of throwline. Once both ends of the climbing line are on the ground, climb on!

In this instance I used a Rope Saver, the leather tube that slips over the rope, to climb DdRT up to that limb. ONce I got there, I put on my lanyard, cleared the climbing line and used alternate lanyards to climb to the top. Once in the top I setup my Rope Guide for descent. The pulley on the RG has been squeaking for weeks but I can't remember to graphite the thing...grrr. I keep forgetting once I get to the ground.
 

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