vertical speedline size/weight limits

snunyabizness

snunyabizness

New member
Location
portland, oregon
did a walkthrough today for an upcoming job next week. it's a big fir, shaped like the letter s, pushing 175' maybe 200'. forested rural Woodland, Wa. Owner says it's making noise and scared of it. They want it reduced to a 50' spar. chip and remove all wood. There's nowhere to fell the tree. It's completely tangled with monster cedars on the backside and mature maples on the other, on the side of a gravel road following a creek ravine, homes less than 200' on both sides. the base on a steep bank about 15' higher up above the road. We have to keep it from falling down into the creek if at all possible. Rigging the countless branches will clearly be a suckfest frustration battle. So I want to spend a few hours clearing open the road and use it for the drop zone where we can process the material. use a redirected winch pull line and butt tied vertical speedline in the hopes of keeping everything landing down on that road. starting directly with the top and then work back down all brush intact going big.

the vertical speedline choked off on top and locked off portawrap at bottom. rigging ring sling tied to the piece butt.

what size rigging rope is appropriate for this?

any vector forces concerns if the piece takes a nosedive or goes in oddball directions?

any gotchas or good tricks?

All advice greatly appreciated thanks!
 
Doing the top first on conifers is the way to go, when possible. Mass damping makes such a big difference. I like mid-tying the pieces, it allows the speed line to exert pull on the piece to help it come over. Drawback is that it puts extra slack into each rig, depending on the distance between the cut and the tie-off point. But the extra slack can act like a safety factor to keep the trunk from getting rocked too hard on heavy pieces. Tighten right up on the line before the cut, the tension helps to pull the piece over, and then as soon as it comes off the slack enters the system. This is more appropriate for vertical speed lining than regular speedline. Keep the sling tight to the piece so that the ring can't smack into the porty, although it should hit the ground well before it gets too close. I like minimum 9/16" for the speedline and 5/8" sling for the ring.
 
southsoundtree said:
I wouldn't do the top first. Someone was showing me that technique early on, then the electrician showed up. He couldn't see the service drop and hit it.




Occasionally, I'll leave a couple branches on it for dampening.
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There is a time and place for everything. Sometimes it makes sense to cut a path up to top, set rigging, take the top and come back down to the lowest limb and commence rigging the rest.
Personally I find this situations kinda rare, and yeah leaving a couple of limbs does ALOT.
 
A couple thoughts. If you're worried about putting too much force on the tree while going big, counteract the resultant vector force on the stem downwards to keep forces in compression on the stem by having a guy line tensioned and tied off to the base of one of the cedars behind it if possible.

Sometimes jobs like that are just a pain the arse no matter how you choose to do it. One climber clearing out a good speed line route from the maples in front towards the gravel road could be the best use of time while another is getting setup to speed line out the entire tree. Having a good setup and pre-slung branches is going to be time consuming yes, but it's also way more predictable/manageable than a chunk of stem wood with brush on it. I don't have any concept of how close to the road and how deep the ravine/intertwined the trees are for the path of material, but if the tree is really that tall you'll be able to get a lot of material out smoothly before the maples become a huge issue (that is if you have a longer distance of travel in the speed line vs a steep angle getting past the maple canopies).

Another thought, getting all the limbs/brush down to the ground and stacked/oriented for winching up the ravine vs trying to get through a big tangled mess, find a way to set a high redirect in a maple for the winching piles to move freely uphill without getting snagged repeatedly, unhook redirect when they are uphill enough for a direct route to the chipper.

Big cuts big results, but sometimes dropping conifer pieces with wood and brush can be a total PITA with challenging terrain in the mix. My two cents.
 
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snunyabizness said:
did a walkthrough today for an upcoming job next week. it's a big fir, shaped like the letter s, pushing 175' maybe 200'. forested rural Woodland, Wa. Owner says it's making noise and scared of it. They want it reduced to a 50' spar. chip and remove all wood. There's nowhere to fell the tree. It's completely tangled with monster cedars on the backside and mature maples on the other, on the side of a gravel road following a creek ravine, homes less than 200' on both sides. the base on a steep bank about 15' higher up above the road. We have to keep it from falling down into the creek if at all possible. Rigging the countless branches will clearly be a suckfest frustration battle. So I want to spend a few hours clearing open the road and use it for the drop zone where we can process the material. use a redirected winch pull line and butt tied vertical speedline in the hopes of keeping everything landing down on that road. starting directly with the top and then work back down all brush intact going big.

the vertical speedline choked off on top and locked off portawrap at bottom. rigging ring sling tied to the piece butt.

what size rigging rope is appropriate for this?

any vector forces concerns if the piece takes a nosedive or goes in oddball directions?

any gotchas or good tricks?

All advice greatly appreciated thanks!
Click to expand...
Pictures would help so much. Is it visible on Google Maps/ earth?




A tree that size will have lots of hazards. Climbing, or at least a drone inspection, will be prudent. Tangled with big maples means deadwood issues are likely. Both inspections would set you up even better for success.

Seems like a job where taking a groundworker out with you to set up the site and find/ mitigate hazards as necessary before a bigger mobilization is worth considering.

PPPPPP
 
Sounds like a hard to predict tangle/ hanger fest possibility of VSL with limbs on. If you'll be processing each piece as it comes down, it sends that the ground crew will be working under increasingly damaged limbs that will be away from both climber and ground crew.


2 climbers working together or on opposite sides of the tree working independently into 2 drop zones???

Branch structure and number are big unknowns.



How steep is the hillside?



Why the unconventional approach?

I've done similar to this technique once in a redwood over concrete and asphalt. More of negative rigging without freefall due to branch entanglements.

Bushy and open-grown. The limbs from the top logs became crashpads for the bigger pieces.
 
Evo said:
There is a time and place for everything. Sometimes it makes sense to cut a path up to top, set rigging, take the top and come back down to the lowest limb and commence rigging the rest.
Personally I find this situations kinda rare, and yeah leaving a couple of limbs does ALOT.
Click to expand...
cutting a path up the front side of the fir and clearing out the drop zone is mainly necessary to open up space for visibility and the ropes.
 
Evo said:
Adding to Southsound, Tangled with maple can also mean maple limb failures as when supported they don’t put on their own reaction wood. I’ve had a few crossing maple limbs let go when their supporting limb was cut. Granted it was in the same tree but maples seem to be “lazy” brittle trees sometimes
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the risk of hangers is a primary concern, both the safety factor and not wanting to waste resources fighting them. not looking forward to that
 
Evo said:
There is a time and place for everything. Sometimes it makes sense to cut a path up to top, set rigging, take the top and come back down to the lowest limb and commence rigging the rest.
Personally I find this situations kinda rare, and yeah leaving a couple of limbs does ALOT.
Click to expand...

Muggs said:
Doing the top first on conifers is the way to go, when possible. Mass damping makes such a big difference. I like mid-tying the pieces, it allows the speed line to exert pull on the piece to help it come over. Drawback is that it puts extra slack into each rig, depending on the distance between the cut and the tie-off point. But the extra slack can act like a safety factor to keep the trunk from getting rocked too hard on heavy pieces. Tighten right up on the line before the cut, the tension helps to pull the piece over, and then as soon as it comes off the slack enters the system. This is more appropriate for vertical speed lining than regular speedline. Keep the sling tight to the piece so that the ring can't smack into the porty, although it should hit the ground well before it gets too close. I like minimum 9/16" for the speedline and 5/8" sling for the ring.
Click to expand...
Muggs said:
Doing the top first on conifers is the way to go, when possible. Mass damping makes such a big difference. I like mid-tying the pieces, it allows the speed line to exert pull on the piece to help it come over. Drawback is that it puts extra slack into each rig, depending on the distance between the cut and the tie-off point. But the extra slack can act like a safety factor to keep the trunk from getting rocked too hard on heavy pieces. Tighten right up on the line before the cut, the tension helps to pull the piece over, and then as soon as it comes off the slack enters the system. This is more appropriate for vertical speed lining than regular speedline. Keep the sling tight to the piece so that the ring can't smack into the porty, although it should hit the ground well before it gets too close. I like minimum 9/16" for the speedline and 5/8" sling for the ring.
Click to expand...
this is what i came for. appreciate the advice
 
Muggs said:
Doing the top first on conifers is the way to go, when possible. Mass damping makes such a big difference. I like mid-tying the pieces, it allows the speed line to exert pull on the piece to help it come over. Drawback is that it puts extra slack into each rig, depending on the distance between the cut and the tie-off point. But the extra slack can act like a safety factor to keep the trunk from getting rocked too hard on heavy pieces. Tighten right up on the line before the cut, the tension helps to pull the piece over, and then as soon as it comes off the slack enters the system. This is more appropriate for vertical speed lining than regular speedline. Keep the sling tight to the piece so that the ring can't smack into the porty, although it should hit the ground well before it gets too close. I like minimum 9/16" for the speedline and 5/8" sling for the ring.
Click to expand...
Can you explain why you think it's the way to go, and why only conifers?

I cut a conifer here and there and rarely, rarely leave dampening branches.
 
To me, mass damping is good practice on all trees - significantly reduces stem wobble, increases safety factor by mitigating effects of shock loads in negative rigging. I have really tried to make it a habit over the past few years. On hardwoods, when it makes sense, I try to leave 2 or 3 good sized limbs that I can get without needing my high tie-in. I'll get the rest of the tree done, then pull my tie-in out and reset it just above my rigging point. Rig the top out, then butt-hitch those remaining few limbs. Then deal with the wood as usual, negative rigging it only as a last resort. Truth be told, my goal on most removals is to just bomb out the top. Even when nearly everything has to be rigged, I can often find a spot where I can fit the top without rigging. So my scenario with mass damping only applies if I have no choice but to rig the top. The ultimate form of mass damping would be to rig down the top first, before taking any other material, but this is really only possible with the simpler structure of, say, a spruce.

I don't work on many conifers at all, and what I do, I would say 80% of them are spruce. What I always did for years is just the classic "limb it up, top it out, chunk it down". But spruce tops are heavy, so you learn pretty quick that if you need to rig the top and you've already skinned up the trunk, then you better be conservative with the top and keep it small. Especially if the whole tree is only 70 ft tall, there's not much room to let a big top run. So when I'm in a situation where I have to rig a lot of the branches anyway, what I do these days is just climb my way to the top to start. I don't exactly "cut a path" there, I treat it more like a trimming job and just climb my way up, dodging branches as I go. I cut some dead ones and a few bigger ones on the way up that are really in my way. During the ascent I have my rope in a backpack. At the top, I feed my rope down in one straight path to the ground and haul up the rigging. First thing I do is rig the top out. I confidently take tops 1.5-2X the size that I would have in the past. We just let them run as far as possible, the size and weight helps them to roll out and over all the brush on the way down. The stem barely moves. It's night and day to rigging a top after stripping all the brush off. After the top is out I just go back down and start working the branches one by one like normal, and work my way back up to the top, at which point, the hard part is already done. It's nice looking up and seeing daylight up top, knowing exactly how much further I have to go.

Anyway, I wouldn't call mass damping a critical technique, or a best practice, just a good idea in certain situations.
 
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