How to Climb SRT with Kevin Bingham - TreeStuff Webinar

[Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] good evening and welcome we're here for the tree stuff comm live webinar on SRT Kevin Bingham I'm Nick Bonner thank you guys all for joining us there's quite a few people here so far I want to thank the whole staff here tree stuff for helping us make this possible everyone kind of pitched in throughout the day on their own way to get all this set up and do this a big THANK YOU to Kael Royer on our camera and Carson Roy on the control panel without those guys we wouldn't be able to do this so yeah thank you guys um Kevin thanks for coming thank you for having me I I heard did you have some trouble today your your mini loader broke yeah yeah out in the street or in the backyard your backyard no no not in my backyard in a very nice backyard in Bloomfield Hills okay that's the best situation we're all pulling for you you guys have ideas on how Kevin can get the mini loader with a broken hydraulic pump out of a very nice backyard put them in the Facebook and we'll read them to them at the end of the night that's the best idea but yeah thanks I know that's a hassle so we all kind of identify with that so thanks for hanging under those those conditions well I had to get out of there I just have to leave so we'll jump right in here um you invented SRT no no not at all well okay so tell tell me about that I'm under the impression you invented it no SSRC has been around for as long as people have been climbing ropes I began climbing SRT as a rock climber it depends on I guess what's your definition of SRT is some people say SRT is single rope technique in which case everybody who's climbing on a single rope is climbing SRT because there's just one there's this one so the SRT has basically been named stationary rope technique and stationary rope technique may be a better word for it for what we're talking about today but that also has been around since as long as people have been climbing ropes I saying tell me how you got start what drove you to start climbing single rope as an arborist well there's a couple things I like I got into the world of rope work through rock climbing when I was a kid you know elementary school middle school high school I didn't get into arbor culture until I graduated from high school I got a job right out of high school and I learned the taut line hitch and the Blake's hitch a lot of guys start out yes and I went with it it was fine it didn't ever seem to me to be quite efficient there were some advances made while I was working on a double line such as the pitch climber pulley and Candide the use of cambium savers the split tail system were big things that made it easier I think for my personal climbing style I always sort of gravitated to a more one-to-one climbing ratio foot locking I can you know we can go over foot locking real quick and gloves you don't know so locking is our basic method of entry this is how guys got up the tree before they learned some of the things that we're going to talk about tonight and my father actually climbed he learned how to climb from Devi climbers who took care of his oak trees in North Carolina they were foot locking back in the 50s they did not use a backup rope or anything but my dad learned how to split lock when he was young he actually taught me how to flirt lock before I even knew what tree work was but foot locking as we know it is climbing on a stationary line and so this is probably my first use of stationary rope technique in our bure culture is is the foot lock and you basically this is my backup knot in a footlocker I am actually I climb the rope and I secure myself with my body in the old days they would spend that they didn't have a backup not so they would climb just until they got at the top of the tree and then they would tie in but this is by the way you shouldn't do that this plus the hitch is there to save you and hold you progress capture shall we say it's very safe the one thing you don't want to do is put your hand above your hitch the natural panic position of a human when they're falling is to reach up as high as they can into grip as hard as they can so this would if you did that you could pull down your hitch cord and which could lead to an uncontrolled fall so you might you make this look pretty easy and I tell you we all know anybody's tried a foot walking isn't easy we're not all is tall and fit and you know athletic is Kevin and doing that was really a hard thing for a lot of climbers I know when I started climbing the locking was difficult and it does take some practice but I would say the foot locking and the way I approached it you know some people you could you can foot lock down the rope as well as up the rope I did this as a climber I'm probably not supposed to but that was my first use of stationary rope technique in in actual agriculture and not after you were still climbing and tying with the double rope system still had to isolate your line and these are things we'll talk about later but yeah so with obviously you do have to isolate your line and that that is the other reason why I started gravitating more toward a single or a stationary rope system isolating the line is very difficult although I did for there's no reason that you need to foot lock on a double rope you can utilize you can foot lock a single line and if you can't on certain trees if you can't necessarily get your rope isolated there's no reason why you can't set it up on a single line you could use a hand defender or you can use a hand ascender you can there's there's multiple ways to do it but it's really the way I've been thinking about it and explaining it people if you have a moving rope system and a stationary rope system which basically is thing about it like gears on a bicycle you have a two to one ratio and your moving system this is a one to one ratio internet Sardinia and one to one system so it's basically the same rope same everything you're just changing gears and sometimes you might want to see with a with a tutor one system I can pull myself up and I'm pulling half my weight so tell me a little bit I know I know the story but there's people here don't you're in Texas right and you were climbing DRT and you were like I had it well so yeah I was um I went down to do hurricane work in 2008 in Houston outside of Houston and they call this area of Texas the Big Thicket and it's trees maybe 40 to 50 feet tall a really dense lots of thorns branches everywhere really gnarly gnarly stuff um hard to get a Lauren set hard to get in really hard to get a line set and so I was sitting there and I was getting paid by the tree so it was really difficult for me to to justify any time spent you know double bagging my line trying to wiggle this thing through you know when I first got down there I was going with trying to set a cambium saver that quickly went out the window just because I was under such pressure to make money and get up the next tree as fast as I could so I basically started just you know throwing my line over pulling up pulling up my rope wherever it fell and I went to Walgreens or Walmart and got a ladder which is funny because when I started the lateral wall or Walmart you know I just Texas and then I was just higher running bowling at the base of the tree and my ground guy would set up the the ladder on the tree I would grab my hitch and just tie it in the same way you would for a double rope just same as I would for double rope but you ran into problems here because you can't come down that way you can't cut it right that's the secret to this is it the prusik want function with just a single users weight on it on a single line well that's not necessarily true it does function and I climbed it just like this for a least a couple weeks but how did you descend with this brute force and there's nothing I and I think it'll miss conception that people have is that there's nothing inherently dangerous about a plastic cord on a single line people people will say all it'll burn up it'll crash you to the ground if you try to descend and I think some of that comes from the note the the the fact that I was just pointing out with the foot lock cord right that if if that Court is set way above you high and you put your hand above it you can cause some problems but a well tied hitch it's solid it's going to hold you it's going to hold you it's keep tricky but you know I can climb I apply my ladder get to where I'm going this hitch is solid it locks down I can work it it's not the easiest thing to do but I would by no means call it dangerous I mean people might object to this but I would my experience never experienced anything other than it being really difficult and it heats up your hands actually at that point even had 10x climbing hitches versus which is not heat-resistant at all and they would get glazed burn up my hands and my gloves would get really hot cuz I'm so tell me what we doesn't work how did we fix it what was the next step well so I climbed on that for for a while probably yeah almost two weeks in my I was there for about a month and I went to SRT probably within the first three or four days because of the base anchor setting align the nature of the trees in those trees I didn't actually have to be dangling in the thin air all that much so you know working a hitch like on the ground isn't that bad of a problem and I went through a few hitch cords be just because they would get so crispy but you know you keep an eye on them and just like anything else I did have a figure eight with me I experimented a couple with a couple of things and I had done spar work using a eight above my pitch before and this is a great technique for working on a spark as you can just and I think mark Chisolm showed me to do this because on a fire you're basically coming down and so I experimented with this a little bit and this is great it takes the takes the heat off of your hitch and allows it to work but as soon as you want to go back up the rope it stalls kind of totally doesn't work it really is limiting that's when I think you've got it oh yeah I I had a revolver here that I had purchased with no real where did you get it um if it wasn't true stuff don't say yeah it was not reached the whole man I don't think Teresa not Walmart not walking it could have been when did recess when did tree stuff happen in eleven years ten years ten years or so ago so it was just brand-new this is in 2008 so I don't know whether you will forgive you yeah I'm pretty sure I didn't buy it I mean I did buy it it Cheryl probably this back house no no it doesn't are you sure I'm positive all right I don't know even if I got it is Cheryl oh I wonder anyway I ended up I had no use for this revolver and so I kind of snapped these two together in this way and this opened up things considerably for me because the this will actually you can't end it and when you descend it takes the hitch friction off of your hitch and you know if I can climb I can my tether is a little bit weird but still looks a little cumbersome but definitely from going where we were just holding the just holding the prusik it seems like it worked yeah this is a this is a huge I mean this is it end of my regular climbing for the moving rope technique after I came across this method I have rarely climbed double rope since and eventually evolved into using like a box wrench yeah and became the wooden rope wrenches nope and then eventually we made it all the way to the zzk one the dk1 and then the zk to a a bunch of different trial and error of getting as you can see with this technique it works great if you're on the tree but for me to go directly up the tree I have to pop this off and then I can set my lanyard over the shoulder and so there's a misconception about srt is that all it's super gear intensive you notice here I'm actually less gear then I was in double rope I'm actually one so I can put lock up the rope I think it's fair to say though the Kevin that most people cannot put those foot lock well this is it that's the least most everybody should be able to put a lock on a single line and if you'll notice I'm in this method I'm doing a 16 foot split lock here so I have all the time in the world if you want to take a foot lock with an extra you know when I'm teaching young younger people how to foot lock you can take an extra grab if you have difficulty but it's still all leg work I'm not you know I'm not forcing my arms at all then I get to where I want to go take my lanyard off the shoulders and then I have to reinstall this before I can come down so there's definitely some cumbersome issues with the fête revolver but for the part it liberates you from the problems of double rope climbing very cool it's always it's always a pleasure to see the fête revolver and you know to really see what you started with and I'm excited to show people what we have made it to eventually excited we have is a CEUs for this presentation they do make us give them a test so we've got a presentation okay jump into it alright done we can come back and hit any of these topics but let's let's get into it here so our first slide is you know unfortunately a disclaimer this is not real training folks this is here to teach you and educate you but this is not a substitute for professional training if you've never done this before I recommend getting with a professional in practicing very low and very slow so first we'll talk about some of the benefits of SRT here you touched on this a little bit but a one to one input yeah so um I want to one of the single and point out with SRT and moving like a lot of people get caught up into what tool or what device it really the main thing is are you in a moving rope system or you know there's variations of efficiency and variations of technique but for the most part there's a moving system and a stationary system and this is a double rope system and just briefly if I'm working in a double rope system I have a two to one ratio so I can pull myself up from limb locks and this is another problem when I had when I was climbing in a double rope system a lot of people are very good at pulling themselves up this way and tending their rope and I've and this is sort of a just a personal thing I always ended up grabbing both sides and pulling myself up into one two one system anyway then I end up with a huge thing of flats and I have to figure out which hand to let go of in order to to attend my slack so not that works well for some people it never really worked well for me coming back from limb ox I always still would come back in a one to one climbing style so there's the benefit of having the mechanical advantage you have that benefit half the effort to pull yourself in but you have to pull yourself twice as far you have to pull yet for every foot of rope I travel I have to manage two feet of rope and that also means that I have if I'm up at the top of the tree where the 200-foot rope that means I have 200 feet of rope below me basically if I'm up at the top by my anchor point and that's all that rope I have to manage and so it plays well into into friction so come around here for me let's take a look here I'll cross over you but as you come here you're fighting all this friction and coming around and if you come come back around let's see if we can see if you can redirect your line up into that union up there what that looks like yeah again basically nothing it's pretty impossible to move I can move but it's definitely especially coming back I definitely don't have my two-to-one help anymore so let's look at let's compare that to a single rope system me this is a consistent function so rock exotica so you're going to see here the consistent friction from srt is a big difference look show us the same was to come to the same maneuver there so i can come over here redirect over here obviously my friction stays the same what i have to do in my system stay the same I can come over here extract him throw a knot on it whatever my friction still stays the same so that's a huge benefit when you're working around the trees and when I was in Texas the trees were close together and I was getting paid by the tree so in Texas I could literally just go horizontally from tree to tree to tree to tree with my tea because they were short we had a lot of rope I had a lot of rope they were short they were close together and I was passing through this this big thicket and not having to worry about my friction whereas if I was in a double rope system I would have to be consistently re tying my tie in point and not every time I mean for instance with the redirect here's my top anchor but sometimes I want to anchor a redirect on this you know and that's not something I would want as my primary anchor point but now it is for all intents and purposes your primary suspension point yeah this is where this is what I'm operating from now but the weight is still largely up there you could do a calculation as to what this is seeing but with a large angle like that it's really not seeing that considerably or when you think about a large tree you have to come down one side and work it in double rope go back up to the center come back down the other side go back up to the center come down a third and maybe even a fourth side side of the tree if it's big enough with srt you can kind of zigzag and go laterally in the tree in a way that's really a lot more difficult without changing your anchor point in a double rope system yeah absolutely I mean that's when you get to the point rope or pre-planning and it's a very different mindset if you're thinking about in a double rope system a moving rope system you want to have that high potential time point and you want to keep your path clear so you have you don't get caught up in too much friction you don't have as much Liberty to use or use redirects multiple redirects there's things you can do in a double rope system that you that are more complicated one of the nice things about a double rope system is that you can you always have access to retrieve your line that's true sometimes in a single rope system you know thousand obama base anchors over there I can't do anything about it I can't move it but you can really ssin it not something that we're going to talk about and demonstrate a little later you know I think when I think about DRT I always think about how the mechanical advantage makes it easier for me but one of the things that SRT users always talk about is how it's easier on their body explain that to me you know is it because I'm always using my legs you know why is it easier when I actually have to pull more weight so I mean I think that is it vary from person to person I think there are people where double rope climbing is suited better for absolutely and I think there are people that single or stationary rope climbing is suited better for there are moves in stationary real techniques that require a lot of power when you that you might want sometimes coming back from a limb walk for example you don't have that two to one a lot of people going into a stationary climbing system when they first get into it in a in double rope in double rope climbing since you're using that two to one you are relying on your your upper body a little bit more you're only carrying half of the weight with your upper body but you're and you're also using the body thrust and so your positioning tends to be a lot of times you'll be back here you know that's not the best pitch right there you have to be careful about your hitches even in double rope climbing good cheese but as you can see people in a moving rope system your position tends to be a little bit leaning back because you're pulling with your arms you mentioned you mentioned the limb off this is something that I think a lot of people struggle with so we've seen you kind of go out and come back on that and we know that you're strong enough to pull this is something that a lot of people start with a lot of people ask questions about can you show me what I have set up here and talk a little bit about it real quick yeah so this is a technique I rarely use this but it is an option sometimes actually I do use it will be on when I'm on spurs on a spar and I want to pull myself back up this is in an essence you're in a single rope or stationary rope climbing system and I often use an ascender there's other ways to set this up but you can move this into a three to one climbing system quite easily by you come out on your limb walk and for those that like to have that natural pull this enables you to do that if you had a pulley up there it's even better with the rope runner you want to watch that's a good way to overcome to the kind of elimination of the 1/1 input that's that's a definitely way to overcome it brings up I think some of the cons of srt that I want to talk about you know you touched on these that it's more gear intensive that's a thing that's associated with it I think I'm one of the people that thinks it is a little more yours I think most people require a foot ascenders you're going to put on here for us it does require new equipment you know as we start talking about rope wrench and the Rope Runner and different climbing systems you know those do present an added expense to people that already own everything they need to climb double rope you know it's hard to argue with the fact that when you do climb VRT you just need basically your rope and you know you can tie in with a closed system one of the things that I find really difficult about SRT is how I advanced my anchor um I'm very bad with the throw ball so you know I get a based I put in it's usually pretty low something I just took what I got I get up there and I'm like wow there's a lot of tree above me how do I advance this base tie up there um that's something that it struggles can you demonstrate and show me kind of what you do to help advance your base tire or not a little bit yeah so I'm going to just start at the ground and there's a couple of ways to do it and there's no shame if you're climbing a tree from the ground up and it's funny because a lot of people will climb a single or a stationary rope to access the tree and then they'll convert into a moving rope system to work the tree and I'm somewhat the opposite in that I'll use a moving rope system to get up the tree and then I'll transfer over into a stationary technique to so anyway you don't necessarily have to do that you can start if you're starting with you if you want a base anchor on the ground say I didn't hit my primary tie end point but I still have a base acre and nice Yosemite Bolin will back up there you can either still can't figure out these Rocko's so I'm climbing the tree singly I'll say first for example it's your kind of you achieve this light this is where you through - right it's somewhat similar to how you would do it in double rope but I can take a little bite and just toss it over and I don't need to pull out you know there's a discussion online and somebody was saying that they throw their tail over first and then pull the whole thing up but until I get to where I'm going all I need to do is throw my throw a bite over another thing that you can do is use a sling a sling is nice because you can kind of hear do you have another press the cord you press the cord with a beaner all right or you can use a sling or a prusik cord and this is almost like a becomes like lead climbing in in rock climbing you can advance up this way or you can until you get to where you want to go using your lanyards to secure yourself Kevin there's 300 people watching I see that pretty awful I'm up here acting a fool I'm learning a lot I'm having fun so you know use of the use of slings is a really good way to get around you can once you get to your next spot you can take that out you can move it again if you have you can use several you know and then once you once you get to where you want to go you pull your rope out awesome that's very cool I want to I want to get into kind of some of the stuff that we have hanging over here Kevin so I think we'll talk a little bit about the different SRT systems that are available today and I think it makes sense to start first and foremost with this one right here Kevin Kevin brought his daughter with him today how old is the shoe shoe she's three almost four she's three and I I'm talking to her and I was like did you know that I invented this right here and she's like no you didn't so I tell us this is what are we looking at here what is it and how does it work this is the rope wrench the inspiration was an actual 13 millimeter box wrench what anti-area rope up what it does is it takes a kink in the rope there's a little bit of a lever arm there's two friction points here and so it very simple just takes enough heat away from your rope but your hitch can function without you having the issues that I did in Texas the hitch is still the primary your primary you want to you want your hitch to work without the wrench being there so the wrench will not hold you up without a hitch so ranch alone does nothing so your hitch is needs to be everything and the hitch the rope wrench basically is just a tool to allow your hitch to work better it doesn't make your hitch safer it doesn't make it to do anything other than it allows you to defend comfortably so show me how it works yeah basically I've got my foot ascender on I can use my lanyard over the shoulder can clip it into here sometimes if you have of your hitch climber you can clip it down into there put ascenders they're always really nice so this is the thing with we're talking about your your positioning for stationary rope climbing you want your body vertical you want your you kind of oriented up the rope here I'm just using one one leg you can add ascenders into that system there's multiple multiple offense systems but then when you get to where you want to go the wrench and that's one thing before you start descending you want to make sure that gets a little bit of engaged so you don't have to pull down too hard on your hitch to make it operate but as basically what it does it allows you to comfortably operate a hitch so this is an improvement this is the the next step from the favorite ballroom yeah so the favorite vulvar was great I took a fartist on I have you know like completed in a couple competitions with it I won it was allowed in the 2009 know what they were looking at today it was allowed in in 2009 I see see see see see see so it's a perfectly good good stationary rope technique but like I said you have to constantly pop off your fate revolver put it back on take it back off where the wrench it can stay on your system and you can climb climb freely full I mean if you you look at this is basically your double rope system the kink is being formed up at the top of the tree so that tree the tree branch is acting as your your rope range my first this takes the same amount of friction that the branch does similar I would say this is more like climbing on a would be more like climbing on a pulley then on a raw branch a natural branch but it gives you what you need it gives you what you need for your hitch to work awesome although there's a lot of mechanicals on the market um the unis endure the first one this is a carabiner challenge here this has got a ball lock for you Kevin differently also I love the bargainer mechanism so I was um in 2004 the TCI a show came to Detroit and I met Morgan Thompson there Tom Dunlap was there tom Dunlap had recently been converted to climbing stationary rope techniques using a unit sender and man I would have saved myself a lot of trouble if I had just gotten one at that time it was a little bit pricier than I could afford back yeah it was 2004 but yeah this is a great straight tool very simple it comes on and off the rope really fast which is a great attribute for any tool it's made out of aluminum I think the biggest complaint that people have is it wears quickly but if you're easy on it it's awesome and it works well from what I understand it was originally designed to be used in a moving rope system and it was discovered after he developed it that you could take a wrap around it and it would work to descend single single rope and that's it's more popular use these days as a single rope possible it ends up the rope excellent really great great tool definitely the first multi sender that I know of absolutely really and the ability to change the chain DRT and SRT with this tool was really a big step forward and um you see how easily Kevin can take it off the rope Rock exotica it does a great job making stuff and um there's beautiful interest and it's very very nice and people like a lot as we talk about mechanicals we'll get to the Rope runner eventually but there's a lot of buzz there's new stuff coming out with the akimbo um I know you've tried it do you like it what can you tell me about it it's it's amazing longness it comes on and off the rope really fast it's light compact I mean I can't I can't say anything negative about the akimbo cool there you go well I'm sure people are going to ask we don't know when it's coming out on totally outside of our control but we're excited and we'll definitely be carrying it and I'm sure everyone will have one mm-hmm a pretty cool thing so we touched on the Rope runner we saw you climbing on it a little earlier this is kinda for me you know the next generation does this like the current evolution of caracals and oh yeah I mean this is the guys on the rope runner I was when I was working on the rope wrench some of the feedback that I got especially I was wanting to participate in the tree climbing competitions and they wanted to develop what they wanted me to develop the rope ranch as our system as a package similar to like to see me climb where it comes all together in one package and my my belief regarding hitches is that they're so unique and so variable every hitch is different every hitch works different on a different rope some guys like longer hitches some guys like shorter hitches that there's no real way to package it so but the conversation got me inspired to work on a mechanical because mechanical is obviously it is what it is and so the Rope runner came out of that it's got some aspects of the rope wrench it's got some aspects of the hitchhiker's got it's got some inspiration from the unit sender it's a kind of a hodgepodge of devices all messages you develop this like like a lot of your tools yourself cutting yourself assembling it yourself doing it yeah yeah I'm the gatech shop actually came after I had developed the Rope runner my first rope runner I had cut out of you just sheets of aluminum using a sawzall and then I was at our customers house and he saw this raggedy jaggedy looking to land was like have you ever heard of tech shop and he told me about tech shop which is a makerspace it has all the tools you need to C&C waterjet vertical mills lathes everything you could possibly so I went there straight away I got a membership and just been hooked ever since then is with a dirty thirty blue rope runner yeah I was able thicken Texas Tech stuff it enables me to get the concept from this chunk of sharp a loom through an actual something that you know I could process and get other climbers on and so really cool so it's obviously a process that you enjoy but I know that not everyone around you enjoys it quite as much as you do and specifically the guys on your crew you know you'll hear Jeremy will tell me stories like you know we were at the job today and Kevin just came out of the tree and got in this car and left and when you leave what's going on like why did you just leave the job yeah I mean except Helena mer what are you doing well sometimes it's kids like my loader will have broken down and I just have to leave but at other times you know with these devices and I'm sure Jamie Merritt and Paul Cox and all these guys that Gordon they can attest to the fact that you know a millimeter difference one direction or another makes a substantial difference so sometimes during the development of this what I would let me address in the middle of work yeah like oh my god it just needs to be I need to move this over a millimeter or I need to make this angle a little steeper I mean let me try this a little bit longer try at the same day taught it and the tech shop was enabled me to go drive over there cut something out and make it back to the tree to finish finish the tree and so yeah this is a really valuable really valuable tool and if you have one in your city definitely would check worth checking out we want we want to make sure that we talk a little bit tonight about anchors well we talked about base anchoring you showed us 270 bowline well let's talk about some of the different ways to base anchor and to do canopy ties and then after that we want to talk about a little bit about the forces and what that does to the anchor so um you know you showed us a really simple bass tie with just a running bowline and a u 70 backup I was always a big fan of installing some butterfly knot above a simple tied base I like that by tying a butterfly knot you know 24 inches above that that tie in knot and then another one another 24 inches above that if you do get into a situation where you're able to be lowered out of the system or you need to be taking that 10 seconds to do that can give people on the ground the resources that they need what are some of the ways that you base tie and why do you do it when do you do it when don't you alright so my feeling about bass ties is I obviously bass eyes are why I got into stationary rope climbing because of not having to isolate my line I never had well that's not true I did use base ties in a moving rope system somewhat but that's a different story next time for the most part I use a bowline with the Bight for a base tie and like you said you can put a butterfly when you're climbing on a moving rope system I never had a Basinger that was low herbal but that said I do I really like my base type I really like my base anchors I can control my climbing I can get the tying points I want I can work through the canopy and it's I'm a big fan of base acres obviously if you're doing removal you want to use a canopy tie if you're doing E major rigging you want to make sure your base anchor is either out of the way or you want to convert to a canopy anchor one of the nice thing is bias are key and I touched on this before is that you can dictate how much rope you are climbing with right so if I'm climbing a 50-foot tree and I have a 200-foot rope I don't want all 200 feet in my system so I can set how much rope I want so maybe I'll I'm planning on doing a redirects I can set my rope right there and then I can come over here and Bay thinker I do what I did here to demonstrate right at the end of the rope that means that however much extra rope I have I basically have to use it all whereas what you're gonna what you're talking about it tying in midline for your base tie so yeah it's no one out front so I'll set and what my usual method is I just use a bowline with a bite so I bring around the bite like this and I tie through and you always want your back up so either a half hitch or you're running but see that's midline attachable you can adjust it now this is not lower Abul this is not a lower Abul technique and I never had a lower bolt technique when I was climbing in a moving rope system so it's not a big never been a big deal to me however I have begun to appreciate having a system that is adjustable so not even as much lower below as your priority which is a nice attribute I will don't get me wrong I think there is a place especially during a sense that [Music] being Laura bow is is a nice nice deal so for I'm going to just move this down a little bit lower and you can use your tail to make the sling around the tree but one of the things that I really like about having an adjustable system is that you can set how much rope you want and then you can have your ground guy feed you more if you need to if you go into another tree or whatever and so a nice friction hitch back that up with a little butterfly you don't absolutely need a weight above it in fact if you have a going through a lot of redirects you don't really even need a figure eight but it can be helpful to have a have a figure eight above or or simply a Munter hitch but if you're going through a lot of redirects you don't you don't even need that in your system but see now this is nice not only because if in case I needed to be rescued the ground guy could come over here untie my butterfly and lower me down to lower me down the tree he can also I can also say hey Jeremy I've passed over to another tree I've done my redirect and oh my gosh I don't have enough rope to get to the ground anymore can you feed me some more rope into the system or maybe I said too much roping I need him to adjust it shorter so having a system where he doesn't have to untie my bowline and you can just if you have a rig or a d-flat is C d-four or one of those devices - is a really nice way to a quick quicker than setting up a friction hitch to having something down there that allows the ground person to feed you more rope into the system so you can go into the next tree and you know I always I have two 200-foot rope so I don't really have a need for short rope even though a lot of my trees are thirty foot trees I'll just use thirty foot of my 200 foot ago rustle in the bag and just leave the rest in the bag and if they need to feed out more s'more into the system they can they can do that with no problem even somebody who's never climbed a tree can I can be like just pull pull pull pull more rope through pull more rope through I don't recommend having grounded advanced your line for you we've never done it well you definitely don't want them untying a bowline and retying a bowline so that means that I think that's a an awesome kind of look at some of these adjustable base anchors you know there are a ton of different ways to provide low herbal based anchors we can't cover all those and we decided not to really even try today but there's a ton of different ways with Petzl rig or is cb4 or figure eight and plus six and another rope friend one of the things that with with those lovel systems that's a problem that a lot of people will set up these fancy lower able systems but they don't have enough rope to actually lower the person out of me anyway needed in in it yeah an emergency in I don't know anyone I don't know anyone that knows anyone that's ever actually been rescued by a lower bowl system so for me when I base I like I said so the two butterfly knots in there and really give people the options that they need in the event that it happens without having a whole set of kid or a whole expense or time kind of wrapped up in it but I want to move on from base anchors and talk a little bit about canopy anchors but that's not something I know a ton about because I was always kind of a base anchor guy but maybe you can educate those of us at home how many people are watching right now car 280 so yeah maybe you can educate those 280 people and myself a little bit about some of the canopy tie techniques and tricks you might use so um canopy ties basically to say it so here's the thing it's the same as your base anchor except it's in the canopy so your Basinger is your tie-in point right if you're if you have a base acre that is your time point so you need to keep in mind everything between you and the your time point which is the base of the tree so the only difference is where we're attaching it and if it's going to be in the canopy is basically the same as a base anchor except the problem with that is when you come out of the tree you it's not as simple to retrieve it so but for the most part I use canopy size in when I am doing removals one retrieval is an issue because the trees coming down with me right so I don't need to worry about canopy size on really thin trees that are kind of shaky sometimes I'll use canopy anchors for the most part I find them a pain other people love them they swear by them they can't stand base anchors I don't really see the point of climbing SRT without basing curse myself but everybody speech their own you can tie a bowline with a bite is my sort of go-to again it's just a bowline I've left some tail here again your backup and that's a solid solid canopy tie now the problem you have if you're with this you need to descend the same way you came up more or less you're allowed one or two redirects so if I come over here right and try to redirect and try to pull it out I end up getting a lot of force rope on rope action so that can be problematic you can end up burning your rope right there underneath that we friends right if we redirect captions to be live up here you'll pull down you're going to be quite a lot more friction as a different love it so there's if you put a piece of hardware in there a quickie is a good little you can do a little quick butterfly feels kind of like a shameless plug Kevin it's a shameless plug quickie kind of a good tool useful for a lot of things I got them on my lanyard but it's just a nice hard link you want to make sure that when you install it but this side ends up against the tree and that's this side so that will not burn your rope it's you gives you a few more redirect options because you have less friction and you're not going to burn your rope up if you go through too many redirects but the thing with canopy size unless you're you don't have a ring ring do you do I have a ring and ring friction severe you know I did not not prepare one I have a I and I with two carabiners that'll work so the others other thing you can do if you tire you're bowling with a bite I prefer some people use butterflies butterflies are not midline attachable I like midline attachable for it's just easier so sometimes you're moving or moving them around and instead of just alright do this a little bit but you can if you install a pulley oops hand me a pulley in a carabiner oh here we go and a pintle pulley works really nicely but any any pulley this allows you quite a few more so you're on the rope up there but you have a pulley below it and that pulley allows you to do quite a few more redirects before you can't retrieve your lines still you're limited when I have a basing cur I'll throw eight nine redirects into my system before I'm done climbing you're still limited with this canopy anchor two maybe three or four redirects tops before you're going to have trouble trouble retrieving and in some trees that's not an issue for other trees it's an issue and I kind of avoid canopy ties unless I'm doing some major rigging or have other concerns about my tie in point so you know we talked a little about kind of a size and about canopy size and to recap you know the pros of a base high are you don't have to isolate your climbing line um you can get it in there nice and quick but it does provide a potentially lower ball or adjustable situation there's some cons to it too though it puts your rope at risk at the ground level if something happens to your rope it ground level it can affect your suspension up in the canopy of the tree and that can be something that's kind of unsettling for people and something that people want to avoid so that's definitely one of the cons of a base type with canopy ties we know that they provide a little less force on the anchors we're about to talk about it in certain situations they do in other situations they can have more sure when water is long yeah election as well don't don't get too far ahead of me all right but they can be cumbersome to install in a lot of cases they still require you to isolate your climbing line which can be you know kind of removed some of the good effects of speeding things up with us Artie and hugs retreat so we talked about that a little bit I want to I want to move into just a little bit of talk about some of the physics and stuff hey let me I'm Oh talk about this canopy tie so there's one canopy anchor that does allow you to basically have more redirect possibilities and this is a your basic I died cambium saver blocked off with a butterfly and a carabiner it allows you to you know this gives you all the benefits of on retrieval of a base pot well not all the benefit but I can do all the we directs I want and then at the end of the day I can retrieve it as if it was a base time as if it was a base time and probably end up getting my rope like cambium saver stuck up in a garage somewhere and process but it's a very good option and one of my favorite ways to canopy tie so as when you go to retrieve there we go so that's an option can be a saver and that can be done with something as fancy or as simple as what you have there or a ring and ring friction set a ring ring you can do it with the rope guide - I've never done it I don't have a rope guide but I've seen people do it with a real guide very cool so I want to talk a little bit because these things on the test that everyone needs to take after this webinar to get your CEU the link will be put up Carson will put it in the chat on the Facebook as its own separate thing and in the listing for this so you'll be able to find it if you can't just keep looking it'll be there but they're going to have to answer some questions about some of the physics and I wanted to talk a little bit about this so on our PowerPoint presentation here we've got a pretty simple diagram that seems to make a fair amount of sense if I pull straight down on a load like this with either one strand or two around it it doesn't really matter that's going to put a a one-act load on my anchor I think everybody understands that if you understand that hit the like button when we start to get into bass sighs we put mechanical advantage in play and not the type of mechanical advantage that we see in a double rope system that benefits us but a tight fit put an increased load on the the other side I think a good way to demonstrate that is if you can hold on to this here if I pull down here with a hundred pounds of force how much force is on the anchor Kevin two hundred two hundred because while you're not pulling down you are anchoring that 100 pounds and putting it on this side and here so you know friction was set up theoretically with totally straight lines we double the force by pulling down and having it anchored at the ground mom that's the inverse of how your standards kind of two-to-one pulley system that's pulling it towards you works but that does happen so but the next thing and you can see we got our graph right here is we start to talk a little bit out deflection so we know that if you come over here you are my base five and I pull down right here with hundred pounds of force do does anybody on the internet know how many pounds of force without looking at the presentation hahahaha that it was going to be I wouldn't have I dad to do the math but it's at a 45-degree angle it's one point eight five times the load so if I pull down with one hundred pounds of force but anchor is only going to see 185 pounds not the two that we saw before right mm-hmm so that makes sense to everybody give me another thumbs up if it makes sense can they thumbs up more than once Carson can if you can thumbs up more than one thumbs up again right now for me see if they come in okay so this isn't you know necessarily an apple or a great diagram of something that happens but I think it's a step as we continue to talk about deflection if we go into a ninety degree and pulled this way you'll see on the diagram here that that's going to give us if I pull down here and you were up there on the truss holding on that we would see a 1.4 times to our anchor load so this is where we start to see where deflection can help us lower those forces that we're putting on it and this not only applies to SRT but it also applies to rigging and this map holds true and goes straight into that so something to certainly keep in mind one of the things that I want to comment on about that and you hear this a lot especially when it comes to basing cur that you're putting twice load on your canopy point and I just think here's those this is this this is a good example right ahead of me I'm gonna get into compression okay you're going to get into college I okay all right back in here Kevin give me a second you were supposed to read the presentation keV well his truck broke down I was trying to get him to read the presentation I started not break no your your mini loader and I'm really really deliver so um this diagram is going to start getting us into two anchor points and how that spread um you'll see on the left in the right anchor both see in this case a 1.4 right so 100 pounds coming down is 142 each anchor and that's assuming a 90 degree spread this math is not meant for you guys to look at a tree and say that's how much I'm putting up there but it's give you a relative idea of how you're impacting these limbs and the things that you're asking of them when they hold us up so just keep that in mind this is the next point that kevin was trying to make and this talks a little bit about anchor point forces in our diagram here we have this showing with my base tie so take your rope here go pull it up flip it up there we go on here [Music] so now give me your go ahead do the deflection um so basically I think people get really caught up in your doubling your forces your doubling your forces now to me when I look at my tree and my planning as opposed to doing the mass which is important to do I find it more important to look at the tree and where the strength of the tree is and so in this branch out here if I'm putting one to one like this I am pulling across the grain of the wood where the tree also you have this codominance them here not the best thing to be pulling even a one to one ratio on that particular tree what we want to do with trees is orient the force straight down the grain of the wood and you can do that with through your planning of how you run your redirects how you on your your angles so you want to get your forces to run straight down the grain of the wood and you can see he has the arrows is that on the screen these arrows bisect the angle so you want to get your angles so they orient straight down the grain of the wood and for me that is much more important than your doubling of the anchor point because you can have one to one on a branch like this where I would rather have you know two to one where the force is bisecting and going straight down that angle so this also flows the tree in compression wood right yeah you want you want to load in compression you want you I think you could you could stack a million tonnes straight down on a branch so I we used to buy quarters for crane why are you exactly what about horse where as that same 2x4 if you load it right you can break it in the middle crack it right let's enter yep so that is a much more relevant conversation when we're talking about science and anchor points and how you plan your route of the tree and why sometimes I find with a base anchor I can get higher up into the tree than I can with a canopy tie based on how I'm orienting those arrows those force arrows and getting and the other thing you have to watch out for is that you can climb in one direction and you're orienting your arrows all in the proper direction but then you've won you might end up meandering over here and you're pulling your rope in the totally opposite way so you have to always keep an eye on where where the forces are being oriented and with redirects you can't get into a situation where it's awesome one two one way but not so great if you switch over to another thing and you end up breaking out a redirector great well cognizant trouble there we want to give some people some opportunities to ask some questions so I'm gonna pass the mic over to Carson who sit at the stick and he is going to read some questions or shout outs if you've got something funny or a story if you've know Kevin or you know wanted to say hey cavern how do your mom throw that in the chat right now we'll try to read that stuff off give everybody their shout outs and then we'll take some good question and we'll have Carson ask them to you and we'll see what you got okay awesome hey Megan so much really fun so far and still got some time left and let's see what people have to say hey Kevin thanks again for doing this for us so we heard a little tang a little crop' and my chords and stuff here give us a second all right okay Kevin one thing I did notice a while back in the chat is what's your favorite wrote for srt and what different kind of ropes I mean is there one type of rope that's better static for system I said semi static something like that you know it all varies I've always been somewhat partial to the yale's 11:7 I mean that goes back to my doubled rope climbing days poison ivy type ropes I've played around on really static lines escalators the km3 different you know there's this vortex which is I really like for removals but it's a little bit heavy if you're doing a lot of redirects I was climbing on sixteen strand the other day and it's a little bit bouncy but then I got kind of into the bounce and started using it to go with so I don't you know people people assume that for SRT that you want a really static line I don't necessarily think that's true for some things it's good but for some things it's a little bit rougher on your body I think the size of the grip is a more important thing really some people like a skinnier rope I like a little bit fatter in the hand I've been climbing recently on the km3 max which is an amazing rope very smooth very static but it is a little bit tight on my hand a small small to my grip so part of me wants to move back to a little bit thicker but I don't know I think it's all personal preference preference you know the devices have it has a lot to do with it so you'd say there's a big trade off you've got stuff efficiency coming from static ropes a little softer on your body with something like a semi static rope yeah and things like grip and not ability that kind of thing that just kind of comes down to what you prefer yeah and you know I think some people for the wrench for example the wrench if you're a light climber you might you know if you're in the 130 to 150 pound range you probably want a skinnier rope so you don't have to fight as much drag here if you're a fatter climber you might want a thicker rope so you get a little bit more more your hitch works a little bit better so your weight I think has some something to do with it as well I tended to start shining away from the really static line just there the thing hard on my gear and hard on me and then even hard on the tree a little bit to Marseille Zapata says how do you protect the cambium when you're using it like a redirect that's a good good good question the the leather sleeves cambium saver the caterpillar I use that especially in the springtime for for maples when you're setting your redirects you can go with a as opposed to a static moving redirect you can set it so it's static using using a sling of there's some you can for instance one thing you cannot help see here I don't know if we were going to talk about redirects later but one of the one of the redirects that I've been using a lot and this is a Joey tree redirect right here is take take a bite or rope around and then tie a clove hitch here oops so I can tie this up tight so that's a it's a static redirect this isn't moving around it's retrievable basically you take your tail I'll get some and you clip it in beneath the bite of the rope here so then when you want to retrieve it pull it out that way so that's the way to do it redirect I think the best way for your cambium is either you do a canopy anchor or you using the caterpillar cambium savers so so you're saying in a lot of cases using srt of friction saver isn't necessarily required because there's no moving rope on the cambium sorry well that's not you know there is especially in trees that move a lot the rope does move and SRT can cause considerable cambium damage so it's something to be aware of and depending on you know a maple tree a young maple tree in the springtime even your boots will twist off the bark so you have to be really careful about about it in certain situations so a cambium canopy anchor might be a better solution in those situations and then using slings for your redirects depending on how much the tree is moving and how much the rope is moving but yeah you can you can definitely scar up the tree maybe not as much as a double rope on but you can you can definitely see it and I'm something to be aware of and there there are solutions so cool I have to apologize to Facebook because there are just so many awesome questions coming in and I'm trying to catch as many as I can you ascended earlier with just a foot ascender is there is there something else that I can add to that system to make to make a scent even easier yeah so now I've gotten rid of all my line okay here we go the first you know the first thing you can add is a hand offender that helps other things you know you saw me use a my lanyard over the shoulder but I chest a chest harness is even nicer this is a haul video especi al so there's a couple of different ascents you don't even need an ascender you could use you could use a prusik you could tie your climb height but this is my old foot lock loop this is a low-tech method and so you want a chest harness to more set up for my runner and you know so this is a frog walking system this is for my left foot from my right foot in this case and this is for my left foot and then so that's two feet to ascend this is nice because I can just come on down when I I don't have anything below me to inhibit coming down except my foot ascender which I can pop off and you can get a similar effect from from like a knee ascender like a hoss for example yeah so this is this is what I use this is a little bit I probably can go faster with this method but there's Nia centers which are nice this is a this is a ha which is amazing you just clip it into your system and it's got a piece of elastic that goes up and down this is a one that I've been using recently that straps over my back and then it's just they say this is called a bungee tool and it's a piece of bungee this clips to my back over here and then I have got my foot loop over here so and this was made by Valentin drezel II in Germany I've been really digging it it's pretty fast but it's just a there's a piece of bungee in there and it advances your line I would definitely recommend either the Haas or some other kind of knee ascender tool if you're if you're really getting into srt that is pretty much a key pickup so your panting the Haas or a bungee tool style device I can show you how this yeah so this is nice because it just kind of hangs out over over my back and I've got a basic a pencil basic well yeah that works just like walking up a ladder I got my mother who's 70 to up a 150 foot pine tree using a foot ascender and a Anna Anna Haas J behold Wayne would like to know what's going on with your bridge setup okay so I found one of the great advantages of stationary rope technique is the ability to climb with two ropes so yeah let's pull pull this out over here I have two Bridge setups because I found that I can easily go into being tied in twice which can be a great attribute for getting around the canopy if so inclined so the nice thing about this I have one set up for that harness I have one set up and I can operate both and with nicer than when you're in two systems I can keep my weight on one and then advance the other one there's lots of advantages of having two two systems you can triangulate really nicely get kind of double crotch if you're working a wide spreading tree having two bridges makes it so much easier having two swivels see I can come around and do it and I'm still not if that was on one bridge I couldn't do that without getting everything tangled up I couldn't just kind of see I can only go with this I have to go the other direction but I can still do a 180 and climbing on to two lines you can really you can really do some cool stuff one of the problems see if I'm in a single line right can you do a back flip you can do a back flip I think on to lunch 16 can you wrote oh can I write now I'm sure I could so Kevin we've all seen the back flip on the internet we want to see the back flip fly you want to see the back flips live okay so I I'm going to explain this a little bit more with in winter rope if I'm out on a branch and I want to set a redirect and I don't have anything to tie into what do I do right I can't tie in below me on the branch it's kind of shaky I can't I'm kind of stuck I either have to tie into my actual line I can spit a put it under here or a plastic up here and tie into my line so I can move it around but if I have to line I can simply keep my weight in one and then use my other one to fit my redirect and you can kind of alternate redirects all the way up to tree so we can climb and like here I got my weight already on that on my primary pion point so I don't necessarily need to unclip or lanyard in [Music] you can get you can use your Pantene to kind of pull you pull you along back time it's a little bit tight in here oh yeah and it's pretty fun a good way to get yourself completely tangled up now the internet wants to know if you can get down Kevin as you're as you're going through this and getting out of this system you set up here somebody asks what your favorite hitch combination is on a rope edge and can you show us how to tie it so my philosophy on hitches is that they're basically variations of wraps and twists I don't really feel like I have the same tie the same hitch two times in a row but I would say they're for the most part combinations variations of evolved attain you know three up I like a 28 works that's a good one a little with the Cooper hitch the distal but like I said every rope is different I end up there's a there's a little distal but yeah I wit with hitches I really do mess around with some constantly I'll take one off add one add a twist add a out of add a wrap take a wrap off I really you know to me they're all variations of wraps and twists and you know sometimes they work and the same one that I worked well yesterday for some reason doesn't seem to work as well today and not catching me or too tight it's a it is a beautiful thing it's a beautiful thing hitches because they're so there's so many ways to do it and you know if it's a humid day if it's a sappy day if it's a fits of or text day one of those nice things about climbing on vortexes and kakhi on as well as they're very forgiving for your hitches so you can get away with a little bit more on some of these skinnier ropes it's really hard to get a hitch that consistently grabbed or is not too tight so my advice for hitches is just keep on playing with them don't get stuck on just one don't think that there's only one way to you know there's one good hitch out there because they're so variable and you know you fry your hitch a little bit and it'll work different so you might have to take a wrap off or add another twist that's kind of my all right Kevin we're working on wrapping up here we've we're already over our time by just a little bit and we're happy that people are still sticking with us on Facebook we're going to try and get interesting last couple questions one that I saw several people ask you mentioned you had a quickie on your lanyard can you just like show us just a quick sneak peek of that setup oh yeah yeah it's just is a quickie and a shizzle I like it it's nice and compact I can still move it to my Center if I want to use it for another tie in point somewhere any other cool stuff you've got there on your saddle bit um we might want to see know people probably don't want to look at my cell at all oh you out a bunch of people with that bridge I think and I think they're yeah I think the bridge area I and I've put in a word to the tree Majan ears to make their tree motion with double bridges I love having two bridges it's really the best thing in the world even if you're not climbing with two ropes like you can it just gives you a lot of fluidity if people want to see that redirects again I think it's the best redirect and you won't ever need to know another redirect she wanted me to show that redirect again alright so Joey 3 redirects you come through with your bite now you take a clove hitch and you want the side of the clove hitch closest to your wrench to go on top and then you tuck the bike through and you can tighten it up this can be kind of long but you're actually climbing on a you're climbing on a clove hitch if you're really concerned about it you can even put a carabiner in that way so for some reason this couldn't pull out this if your weight is on this closet it's not coming undone but you can retrieve it by there's a little X on the clove hitch there which you can clip into with your tail or whatever so when you're done climbing this is not a slipknot at this point so when you're doing climbing you can take this yeah I think that's about the only redirect I use these days other than a natural redirect so you get into a lot of there's huge discussions over all the redirects out there but that's the one that I use pretty much regularly and that's that's that is stationary rope technique redirects redirect redirect you can do so much with redirect understanding the forces of the tree using that compression wood using those arrows thinking about the arrows and how to set that up you can get really far out there on the canopy get out to make those nice pruning cuts at the end of the branches rather than in the middle of the tree don't cut out the middle of the tree like so many people are doing get to the end make those smaller nice cuts and really really bend it like ving them as they say bend it like bingham hey you know I could listen to you to your talk all night long Kevin but Carson sent me in here to give us the hook and I just I want to say thank you to literally the hundreds of people that watched from all around the world are there's people from all different countries Facebook tells us it's pretty cool and they tuned in to see you and I want to thank them for that I want to thank people for giving us their time in the evening Carson is going to post the link right now for the is a test you got to get eight out of ten right guys to get to see you you can only take it one time so you know get it right okay that's pretty rough it's tough but you know a huge thanks to Jim Spiro who's retiring this year at the is a huge you know good will to him and God bless but big thanks for him and Kevin and Emily making this possible you don't believe in and thank you Emily yeah let's do this and not well and thank you to your wife Emily for oh yeah sighs are these are you know I'm Emily it is a but okay go to the guys that is a for allowing us to provide is a CEUs for live broadcasts were the only people doing this anywhere in the world were the only people that have done it and it's really awesome that they were the first I'd say see you webinars are now the first one this is the third time that we've offered IAC use for web broadcast so second time we've done a webinar here at the HQ and it was a leap of faith for them to do this with us and I can't thank them enough and tell them how much I appreciate it so um thank you to you thank you to your wife thanks to Courtney who's in there you know what actually they've been really supportive this is Zoey hey Zoey get some bread you want to you want the microphone and thank everybody for watching thanks for watching thanks for watching on every order with the discount code online no we'll work on that that's it thank you guys all for watching thanks to Kevin for bringing his family out here I called him on Monday I think and asked him if he would come do this with us so really appreciate it man so don't honor thank you it's been been fun thanks a lot guys signing off true stuff calm you

Channel: TreeStuffdotcom

Views: 106,696

Rating: 4.6616454 out of 5

Keywords: tree, treestuff, stuff, trees, arborist, arbor, arboriculture, climb, climbing, treestuff.com, wesspur, bartlett, sherrill, sherrilltree, tree climbing, gear, equipment, product, abr, SRT, single rope, single rope technique, anchor, base anchor, canopy anchor, tie, base, canopy, stationary rope technique, rope runner, rope wrench, unicender, how to, DRT, DdRT, Kevin Bingham, help, instruction, class, learning, webinar, stream, live

Id: 9uNWjhB6Gx0

Length: 99min 8sec (5948 seconds)

Published: Thu May 18 2017