SR.Timeline

L

Leroy

Carpal tunnel level member
Location
Fresno
A post in another thread made me curious about the timeline of srt coming into trees in particular about what different gear came around at what time.

This thread is talking unicender in 05, seems like it was around before this thread as well.
http://www.treebuzz.com/forum/threads/unicender-2-the-latest-version-an-updated-uni-1.3407/

Looks like the wrench around 2010? This thread had a link to another about the fate revolver but the thread linked is missing...
http://www.treebuzz.com/forum/threads/singing-tree-rope-wrench.17253/

Are these the first available mechanical and hitch based srt devices?
 
Haven't heard wackadoodle for a while...thanks!

In about '91/'92 I was at a buddy's place. His roomie was a caver.
there were a few books in his library that were interesting. On Rope really caught my eye. There were lots of things that could work for tree climbing. A trip to Half Price Books put the first edition of OR in my hands.
that's how I got interested in SRT.

This is pre Internet so what I learned was on my own. I'd meet up with other climbers at events and talk about what I was doing. There was some interest and others thought I was completely off my keel. That attitude is still around and I find that the best reaction is to not react and find people with open minds.

Soon enough I figured out the access procedure we now call, Single Up, Double Down. I'd isolate my TIP andsend up a running bowline to choke. Next breakthrough was to leave a tail in the bowline as a pulldown if I didn't need to climb all the way to my TIP. Next...base anchor. No one was teaching me any of this. I was on my own to work out the details. Around that time the ISA started their discussion forums. Lots of great people involved and we could share ideas.

There were some srt systems that sorta worked in trees. Variations on RADs. That was OK but not smooth like DdRT. I tried a few hitches but they didn't work. Starting in fall '03 or so I started going through trying to find a combination of rope, cordage and hitch that would work for ascending but grab when I let go. Then it needed to not lock down tight. For another year I went through a myriad of combinations. Some hitches would work perfect for ascent but would slip and not lock up for descending. My conclusion was that something needed to be added to the hitch to let it slide but grab. My idea was a Bachmann Hitch or a variation.
then I crossed paths with Morgan Thompson [at TCIA Expo in Long Beach, CA in April of 2005] and the Unicender. A very fateful day for both of us!

Kevin Bingham solved the issue of how to add a bit of slippery friction with the RW instead of a Bachmann.

Along the way there was a lot of mockery of my enthusiasm for SRT. Pffft! My motto became, SRT is the future of tree climbing. What would you say?

It didn't take me long to know that SRT would add another decade to my climbing career. It did!


a lot of details have been left out but that's my story with SRT.

There might be in sights here:

When did you hear...
 
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Well, that got me thinking and looking... GriGri was in '91... RE says '05 for the Unicender, but that might be when it went into full production. Were they slowly introduced to some climbers while in the prototype stage? That seems to be the way most stuff shows up, these days. Of course, that also makes the most sense... get the bugs out as best you can before the big, official release date.

I can remember using welded, steel rings from a harness shop for various climbing purposes, back in the mid-late seventies. I cringe about that, now, but there weren't a lot of good ways to get gear and information in those primitive times. I was given an old, handmade ascender that I now think was a hillbilly clone of a Jumar. I actually descended down into, and back out of, the Ogallala Water Aquifer with this dinosaur gear. Numerous times. Until the long arm of the law snagged a few of us, half drunk, in the wee hours and I had to have my brother come bail me out of the Crossbar Motel.

It's a miracle more of us aren't on the Darwin Awards website.
 
The first Hitch Hikers came out in the spring of 2012. A truly unique tool in this class of off-angle ascender/descenders as it does not depend on rope deflection for its friction control. That means if a 500 lb log was to land or roll onto the tail of your climbing line, causing it to become as taught as a bowstring it would continue to function in a normal manner. Try that with any of the others.
I do take exception when I hear comments or read articles like the one linked above by Mark Bridge, claiming that having used various methods in the past to enter the tree on a stationary rope, somehow qualifies as something similar to working the tree on a stationary line. The picture in that article brought back memories. I started using unsecured foot locking in 1973 and various ascent-only tools along the way. Trust me, they have very little in common with today's SR climbing.
 
DSMc said:
The first Hitch Hikers came out in the spring of 2012. A truly unique tool in this class of off-angle ascender/descenders as it does not depend on rope deflection for its friction control. That means if a 500 lb log was to land or roll onto the tail of your climbing line, causing it to become as taught as a bowstring it would continue to function in a normal manner. Try that with any of the others.
I do take exception when I hear comments or read articles like the one linked above by Mark Bridge, claiming that having used various methods in the past to enter the tree on a stationary rope, somehow qualifies as something similar to working the tree on a stationary line. The picture in that article brought back memories. I started using unsecured foot locking in 1973 and various ascent-only tools along the way. Trust me, they have very little in common with today's SR climbing.
Click to expand...

Thank you for sharing this. If your rope is pinched from below, wouldn’t it still make the hitch incredibly hard to break?

Stationary rope ascent has been around for a long time.

Stationary rope descent has been around for a long time.

Stationary rope work position is quite new, really only having come around in the last 10-15 years.

The F8 Revolver was the first real work positioning system used no? I suppose you could have used a grigri but it’s not exactly ergonomic for tree movement
 
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DSMc said:
The first Hitch Hikers came out in the spring of 2012. A truly unique tool in this class of off-angle ascender/descenders as it does not depend on rope deflection for its friction control. That means if a 500 lb log was to land or roll onto the tail of your climbing line, causing it to become as taught as a bowstring it would continue to function in a normal manner. Try that with any of the others.
.
Click to expand...
The taz lov, bdb, runner, akimbo all are capable of this as well. The hh was the first tho as far as I know. It is a sweet atribute.

. This is a zip line set up over the summer with the runner.
 
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A few years BMC...Before Multi Cenders...I met a guy at a Wisconsin TCC who had a system adapted from big wall climbing. A handled ascender on an arm's length tether. A figure eight to his harness. It worked...sorta.
 
New Tribe, in Grants Pass, Oregon, was teaching SRT ascent well before 1994.
My initial contacts w/ them were thru Tom Ness & Sophia Sparks (original founders).
After the ascent they would switch over to DRT for limb-walking & decent.

Ness & Sparks are referenced numerous times as contacts & suppliers (in 1994), in the book "The Wild Trees", by Richard Preston. The book about Steve Sillett (& others) in the their adventures exploring the NW redwoods.
(Great Book ! .......... but don't climb like they did back in those early days.)
 
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Not a multicender, but I remember an interesting device called a J-arms frictionless descender from circa 2010, when I began making an OAR.
 
That's cool, Kevin! I'm not sure that those videos represent what I was talking about though. Have you tested the runner for functionality in both ascent/descent, on a taught vertical line?
 
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