[ QUOTE ]
rfwoodvt, The picture of the guy in a dead pine top made my butt pucker
Looks like he's tied into a small and half gone dead stub!
[/ QUOTE ]
That would be me and my fat arse up there.
Looks are deceiving. That was a long leaf pine that had the top blown out...never did find it...the needles had been stripped and was eventually killed by wind induced ring shakes during Hurricane Charlie in 2004.
It had only been dead a couple of weeks when we did that climb.
The tree itself was only 25-30 feet tall and we climbed it as part of a training class for Muni crews.
The Charlotte County Tree Warden and Extension office wanted to do a pruning class for the Muni crews and wanted to demo climbing this tree was right out in the open ready to be entered.
Anyhow, the tree was more than sound and my line actually went around an 11 inch section of trunk (11 at the whorl about 8 above and 9 below) snaked among the whorl of branches.
That broken stub was all that remained of the top and was about 8 inches by 4 inches and still solidly attached.
But I am a wuss when it comes to fear of falling...no wimpy tie ins for me! So I made sure I was well below the stub and snaked it around some of the limbs at the whorl so the rope neither slid up or down.
Lets just say I made sure I warn't goin' nowhere. In fact, I had snaked it around a little too much as friction made it near impossible to walk out that limb.
Here is the full length picture of that tree...as you can see it is quite short and you can just barely see my TIP.
The line goes over the limb protruding to the front and under the one heading to the right. It then runs behind the tree and snakes under another limb off the back.
there is a little branch that curls down in front that makes it appear I'm only tied into one of the branches but that is an optical illusion.
