3 Best Canopy Anchors | Best ways to canopy anchor SRT | professional tree climber arborist review

welcome to strider tree gear today we're talking about canopy anchors these are my top three canopy anchors for a single rope technique so i've got three different ropes here and and i'm gonna give you well it's about six different anchors but three of them fall into the same category so canopy anchors are really useful they're really effective i've got a video on my channel about why you would want a canopy anchor rather than a basal anchor so check that out if you're curious on that but we're just talking about canopy anchors today and these are the three that i use day in day out all the time there's a bottomless list there's so many different anchors there's all kinds of cool hardware on the market that you can use there's a million ways to skin this cat so these are my three favorites i'm gonna go through one at a time and you can tell me what you guys think what you like to use i'm gonna start with the most basic anchor it doesn't require any hardware uh all you need is a rope that is at least twice the height of your anchor it's as simple as this you take your long standing end of the rope make a loop you can use i'm using an alpine butterfly you can use a bowline on a bite the idea about this is you know like obviously it's not uh it's a closed system if i put soon as i put this rope through there and i pull this up the tree there's no way that can come undone i have to break the rope somehow the alpine butterfly is a safe knot to climb on and that's it that's that's as simple as it goes you pull that thing up in the tree and once that knot hits the top branch this is safe and climbable you take this you tuck it out of the way this is your retrieval end so you get one of the things you always got to keep track of your working end your retrieval end um all of these are going to have that dynamic one of the cool things about this sort of canopy anchor is even though this is the retrieval end it only retrieves that this is unweighted so despite the fact that i'm canopy anchored if i were to have an accident or some sort of emergency and another climber could actually climb this because i'm canty levering it like there's no he's not going to pull me out of the tree or up into the tree by climbing on this other end so it could be climbed up but only when this is also weighted that's the most basic most basic canopy anchor simple as that okay so this particular method has a couple of distinct advantages disadvantages obviously it's simple there's no hardware there's nothing obvious to fail but one of the downsides is i actually have to feed this rope through the knot and uh and once that's up there it's set i can't i can't just undo it without completely disconnecting myself from the system untying the whole thing pulling the whole rope through and it's quite quite a pain so one of the ways that we resolve this while still essentially doing the same method i can take a notch quickie and this is kind of my preferred way to do it this is probably the most common anchor i use you put the quickie in there make sure it's all the way in and now when i pull that up one number one if i pull it down it's going to have a little bit less friction on it but number two once it's up there i can disconnect this and i can pull my rope out without having to go through the whole length of rope and re-tie knots or or do anything like that so it's really easy to set and unset and it's only one extra little piece of gear also this notch quickie can be can be side loaded so even though it's wrapped around a fairly small branch it doesn't matter you couldn't do that with a carabiner but you can do with this little device another way to do the same sort of setup that a lot of times when i'm climbing on a spa this is what i'll use because it chokes off real easy if you take a pinto pulley and now i won't usually set this as a ground anchor from the ground but because of the way the branch sits right here it's we're not we're not uh cross-loading this pulley real bad we're not cross-loading this carabiner and it creates a very low friction retrieval system so one of the advantages of this is if if i'm if i okay so i climb up the tree i work my way down a branch i lay out and now my my the tail end of my rope's way off to one side when i go to retrieve this it adds a bunch of friction at this point now the notch quickie or just the knot by itself is going to make it really difficult to retrieve this rope but with this little pulley in here it's actually pretty easy still because it takes a lot of the friction out at that point so this is sort of the third way to do this one type of a basic choking canopy anchor and like the notch quickie you can take it out while you're up in the tree just like that super easy it can be adjusted can be moved just a little bit more expensive you know this is almost 100 worth of gear right here versus 30 bucks versus free so that's one it's just the standard choking canopy anchor all right canopy anchor number two we've got i already set my rope up here and i went ahead and put one end of the rope through this ring on this soft eight i made this soft date i don't like it that much i think you can buy them but uh they're they're really simple to make so you put one end through you pull your rope up and over then you take your other end and you put it through here now like the other one this is sort of closed system but unlike the other one this one has some has some cool uh cool advantages so what i'm gonna do here i'm gonna take i'm gonna tie a stopper knot underneath one end of this go ahead and use an alpine butterfly and for good practice i should should always put a hard hard connection here so now there's no way the stopper knot can come loose and get through that ring when i pull this up in the tree i'm very quickly going to come to the end of this rope okay so here's a common challenge that thing's not up there rested against the branch yet it's not quite choked off but i'm at the end of my retrieval line because this rope is short here's a cool trick take the other end of your rope and you make a loop out of it you can you know do an overhand knot i like to use a sheet bend because even if i jam it it still comes out easy enough so i'm gonna sheep end that on the retrieval side now i can choke it the rest of the way and even though my rope's no longer in reach still got a short rope i can still pull it out from the other side so this is uh canopy anchor number two it's nice because there's it's fairly simple there's no no cross loading no carabiners involved that you got to worry about getting kinked in there you don't have to worry about pulling something out a piece of hardware through a tight union it's just that one figure eight and to get it back just pull down the other side and it'll come right on down now this one i can also once i'm up at the top i can undo my stopper knot and i can pull this out i can rearrange it i can move it around the canopy if i need to and this creates a nice smooth surface so that even if i'm if i've got one redirect maybe two if they're fairly close in line i can usually still retrieve this without any trouble so there's some other great attributes to this particular anchor and there's an arborist from arbor fest west a couple years back who did an excellent demo and i'll see if i can find the link for you guys so you can check that one out arbor fest west is a great resource for those of you guys on the pacific northwest hopefully it'll fire back up here once we get through this whole kobit mess you should check it out all right that's the last canopy anchor i'm going to show you today again just use as your regular rope and one extra piece of hardware a ring so if you leave a ring on your rope what you can do is you can take your ring have it go through both ends of your rope pick which end you want to climb on and tie a stopper knot on the other side so in this case i want to climb over here on this side this is going to be my retrieval end i'll tie a quick stop or not a little alpine butterfly now you can um there's a couple things you can do here i think i showed you the hard link like this or if you don't want to deal with having another carabiner you can actually just take the other end of your rope and run it through that loop now you think oh that's the same thing is that the first choked session the first choked anchors you showed me but it's not it's a little bit different because when i go to retrieve this i don't have to pull the or the rope itself is not where most the friction happens because of this ring this ring keeps these two strands in parallel so even though they're choked up there they stay the rope feeds through this knot real easily so it doesn't build up a whole bunch of extra friction uh the exception being if it's if you're up and over another branch out here then you're gonna end up rubbing so we'll go ahead and hard link it with a carabiner because i don't like feeding ropes all the way through now once again the problem i'm gonna have here as i pull this up into the tree i'm gonna be short so i will tie a little knot it's a nice ugly knot there because i'm playing with the very end of my short rope so it must be once again pulling that all the way up in the tree and that little ring doesn't mind being side loaded it doesn't change the effect any it locks off real solidly and now the canopy anchor is up there and the end of the rope's right there at that point too so if i want to move it if i want to reset the canopy anchor if i want to switch to double rope once i'm up there so i can traverse the canopy more easily this can all be done pretty easily and the only extra hardware i've got is that one little ring it retrieves nicely as well so i'm gonna pull down here on this retrieval end and down she comes usually the ring follows down sometimes it's stuck up there like this and then it just drops right there in place one little piece of hardware keeps it all rope on rope friction you know if you can imagine the branch in here when that chokes off i don't have any any harsh rubbing i don't have any uh knots choking off real tight so this doesn't bind up very simple effective canopy anchor now that you've watched this long i've got one other cool tip for you that's not exactly a canopy anchor but it's one of my favorite redirects so if you come over here with me we'll act like we're taking a little bit of a limb walk and now we've got a spot we're going to redirect and say drop down one of these one of the cool tricks you can do you would attach your lanyard around this and then pull some slack in your canopy anchor pull a bunch of slack through take a bite go around your round wherever your redirect's going to be you can try to equalize the pressure a little bit take the end you're going to be working on throw a little half hitch in it doesn't have to be real tight in fact it's better if it's not tight through a second half hitch a little bit farther down right so now i've got two half hitches on this bite through the canopy anchor carry me through the the secondary the redirect and then take a little carabiner i'll throw my tail up through here this is pulling back on the original spot and now i can i can sit in this and i'm going to be on my redirect so okay so i'm going to belay down i'm going to move way out here again whatever i'm coming back but now i'm heading back this direction and i want to go back to my original tying point all i got to do is throw my lanyard around another branch get a little slack in the system and if i pull on this i can actually pull out the knot over here slack it up and it comes all the way out then of course you gotta pull all the slack through but now i'm back on the main line and there's your retrievable redirect with no hardware necessary except for that one little carabiner you can actually get away with not even having the carabiner but that's the easiest way to do it all right so you gotta make sure you pull the slack from the top of the device [Music] take that go around half hitch half hitch this is where it is the release if there's slack here you pull on this to get it released and out it comes just like that in conclusion uh when it comes down to it i like things simple this is probably my go-to anchor i use this every day it's one piece of hardware it's i can take it off and on when i'm up in the tree and conceptually it's really easy for the groundies to set by themselves i don't have to worry about anything it's so straightforward these are all great they all have their places i'd like to know what you guys use why you like it um thank you for watching strata tree gear be sure to join us next time like subscribe hit that little bell button so you get notifications got more videos coming out soon and let me know in the comments what's your favorite canopy anchors when do you use them do you prefer canopy or basil i'd love to love to hear your stories and and get your feedback so thanks again [Music] you

Channel: Strider Trees

Views: 123,923

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Id: 8I4LJL2dKcg

Length: 14min 25sec (865 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 15 2020