Just a thought ...

[Kevin]

What would you think of a series of two foot fiberglass sticks held together with an elastic cord much like the new tent poles but with a hook on the end for grabbing a rope at an extended distance?
It could use a bayonet style twist lock to keep the individual sections from coming apart.
They could easily be carried in a pouch on a climbing saddle.

 

[Tom Dunlap]

Sometime in the past year or so I saw that an arbo made a hook stick that telescoped. Each section slipped into the next bigger one. A hook on one end and handle on the other.

I think that I've seen fishing poles that worked in a similar fashion.

Tom

 

[Yoav]

Slightly cheaper (and shorter) than a tent pole would be old style lecture pointer, with the addition of having a ballpoint pen in it as well. Even cheaper is a trip to the scrapyard to grab a car antennae.

There was a neat idea posted on treeclimbing.com (or was it here...) about using a grappling hook with a weight attached above as a throwing bolos to retrieve line....
I was thinking this could perhaps even be done for the cost of some hardware store screw-nuts..
Another rumor which is worth tracking down is that cement layers use a tripod shaped similarly to a grappling hook as part of the process of laying cement.