How to Pick the Best Gear for Tree Climbing

[Music] hi I'm Nick Bonner for tree stuff comm and today we're gonna answer a question that we get from people all the time and that's where do I start I want everything that I need to climb a tree and I've been reading and watching videos but I still don't know what I need where do I start and this is a conversation I've had with lots of customers and I always recommend that people start with PBE you need i protecting you seem where in prescription glasses I'm not doing any work today normally if I was out on the job set I would have contacts in where there's e87 safety glasses a helmet and ear protection when you're around machinery see I've got one of the new Petzl helmets on also really like cast helmets I would be I think my personal preference I really like the cast super plasma all the time those spent in helmets that ones worked really well for me as far as safety glasses go I really like cheap safety glasses the replaceable ones that you can get scratched and throw away those work really well we sell pretty cheap safety glasses with the tree stuff brand on them we put them in orders and honestly those would be my preference over some of the more expensive models as far as ear protection goes I'm a big fan of both earplugs and earmuffs I think everyone should have snap down earmuffs on their helmet if they're out working around heavy machinery and then they should probably also have earplugs for times when maybe they have a different helmet or sometimes you even need double protection with a really big chipper boots gloves things like that are great I have some pretty strong feelings about boots we have an entire video on boots we also have an entire video on safety glasses and ear protection that you can watch but you can get all my opinions on boots from that video gloves there's also a whole video on our Burruss glove choices you can watch that but I generally will lend to prefer cheaper throwaway gloves you don't absolutely have to have them but a nice pair of like latex tip gloves or the vinyl dipped ones are really nice especially if it's cold or wet or you're doing a lot of roping but harness I consider basic PPE the video is about what do I need to get climbing so here you see I'm wearing the petzl Sequoia this is my saddle of choice it's very nice it's at the higher end of the price range option like the tree motion from playful burger is going to be top of the line about as good as you can get I think it comes down to preference at the high end between these two models if you're looking for a more value oriented option or something more economical the knotch Sentinel I think is by far the best bang for your buck or pound for pound fighter it's really comfortable it's super adjustable and it's you know under $400 whereas this and the tree motion are in that 500 plus range so right that's what I think about saddles now the other thing that I think you need beyond PPE is basic education there's a really great book by an author named Jeff Jepsen called the tree climbers companion the tree climbers companion is inexpensive paperback book it's got a lot of illustrations and it will teach you soup-to-nuts about all of the basic activities and the equipment types and choices that I'm talking about in this video and they do a really thorough job so I really recommend that book by Jeff Jepsen which is the tree climbers companion beyond that if you're looking there are great professional certifications from is a including certified arborist as well as some lower level classes and certifications foreground worker and Buckett operator and things like that through the TC ia as well so education is really important at least start with the basics get the Jeff Jepsen book so you've got your PPE you've got some education the next thing you need to do is get a rope into a tree you can see here today I've got a rope already in the tree but in order to get a rope up into the tree you're gonna need a throw line we have a whole video on throw line throw line basics and things like that there's also a lot of video about the different types of throw line and throw weights you see here I use in this cube this is the knotch throw line it is essentially the same thing as Samson zing it it comes in 1.8 millimeter and 2.1 millimeter it's a Dyneema hollow braid this is a pretty ubiquitous model like I said it's the same thing essentially as Xing it it's thin I I find this one to be really good it's probably my second choice of them being honest top choice I really like dynaglide by toy furburger it's over 2 millimeters and it has like a silky smoothness that some of these thinner lines are a little there they hurt your fingers you know so I like dynaglide it breaks it a thousand pounds which can be a upside or a downside you know if you get your throw ball stuck you may not get it back because you can't break the throw line once you've picked a throw line you'll want to go ahead and pick a throw ball throw balls are I think a pretty commoditized item it's a lead bag of a nylon bag full lead shot they're made out of various materials all of the patterns have kind of gravitated towards you know one pattern now all the manufacturers are essentially using the same one the knotch throw balls are as good as any other they're made out of a thousand 10-year nylon they have the best patterns if you ask me they're color-coded by size which i think is nice and they have a lifetime warranty that none of the other bags have so I would definitely buy a notch throw weight I don't see any reason to get anything else that's kind of the basics of throw line or getting your line in the tree or tree access covered the throw line we covered the throw ball the next thing that you need to ask yourself is what kind of rope that do you want and I think that that is going to hinge on a question of what is your ascent style gonna be are you gonna ask arty or are you gonna do our T so we'll talk really briefly about DRT and SRT when you climb double rope technique you can do it with a lot of different equipment or you can do it with relatively little equipment here you'll see I can tie in with two half hitches to this carabiner and then come over here make myself a little bridge and just tie a Blake's hitch right with the end of the rope I don't need really anything else other than this and this technique and others are covered in tree climbers companion and here I could climb on this Blake's hitch and it's gonna work right I can hip thrust up and then easily come down so if that's how you're gonna climb and you're gonna climb double rope like that you know I would recommend not a 24 strand rope like you see here but probably a 16 strand rope or a 12 strand solid braid like true-blue or something like that if you want to stay within the DRT range but you want to do something that's a little bit nicer or works a little bit better you can go to a much more modern closed system and will actually jump a couple of options here and we're go ahead and install this prusik on here I'm just going to use a valve to tighten tres there are a ton of different knots that you might tie based on the type of press accord that you had the diameter of it the length of it all those things you can choose I generally will recommend that people start with an eight or a ten millimeter press accord in about 28 inches with the sewing eyes the sewing eyes are going to give you a little bit more usable space which is really nice when you're tying to hitch especially and a 10 millimeter prusik is going to be forgiving and responsive on most ropes so here I've attached a hitch climber pulley my 10 millimeter prusik it's been a while since I tied in with an anchor hitch it would be nice to have a spliced line here with an eye on it but I don't have one so I'm going to use an anchor Bend and now we've tied in with a much nicer more modern DRT system you see when I pull down here though I'm pulling above my hitch so especially as I build up slack right by pulling a couple thrusts I'll need to hold and pull that slack out so I think that's if there is a downside to climbing with this type of system versus something more basic like I Ellis trated at the beginning that would be one but this is going to be much smoother especially when you're limb walking out or just shuffling slack versus having to manually advance or even have a pulley 10a Blake's hitch even on a split tail which would be another step back but this is a really great DRT system one of the things that I especially like about this is if you decide that you want to if you decide that you want to climb SRT you can do that with relatively the same set of gear so when you try to weight and descend on a prusik with a single line it will get too hot and get jammed up and it just won't work but you can take the same equipment and you can throw in a rope branch with the same not usually some maybe not you might need to modify your knot but potentially the same not the same carabiner that you were using and now this is a little bit of stuff here for an oval carabiner you get those two legs from the two legged prusik on there the two legged stiff tether so here we go I've got my stiff tether on there I've got my two eyes of my Prosecco it's all in and I am set up in a rope wrench set up but I would say that this project is a little bit too long so I either need to tie a different knot or use a shorter prusik and this is a this is a 32 inch right so I would definitely recommend starting with a 28 inch so that if you do decide to make that switch to srt that even with the normal length tethers you won't run into this type of Jama one of the big benefits of climbing srt over DRT is that when you do climb the rope and you go ahead and put your rope into a foot ascender and you stand up when you go up you're gonna go up the full amount that you put in verses on DRT you're pulling two times the distance through versus one so if i was gonna be climbing srt the type of rope that i would be looking at would probably be if i was going to use a mechanical something like this notch dragon or if i was going to be doing with a prusik and a rope wrench like this I would look at something like notch Banshee or joyful burger Tachyon or the eleven point eight millimeter yellow lines so I think these ropes are pretty good but tachyon if I had to choose one would probably be my choice for an all-around climbing line you can use it for both DRT and for srt if you're gonna be climbing DRT and you're not going to be using a friction saver or something like that I highly recommend checking out a sixteen strand rope there are a ton of different options from Samson joyful burger and Yale they're all pretty much the same I would say the Samson Harbormaster lines like brw Blue Streak those were always the ones that I used when I was out in the field and I've had great experiences with those so I would definitely recommend those first hand if you're going to be climbing SRT you are going to need a little bit more equipment at the very basic level you're gonna need a foot ascender I wear the notch jet step this is a foot of Center that we helped design it works great it's probably my favorite but I'm a little bit partial before the jet step I had always been a Pantene kind of guy and definitely rocked the older school Pantene that you could lock with the carabiner for a really long time but you know that we have a whole video on photo centers as well you can watch where we talk about the pros and cons of each model but the CT quick step is by far the best seller and that's the one that has the outbound cam to lock it that's definitely always been a favorite once you have a foot ascender that's all you have to have in terms of the ascent for SRT but Annie ascender which I don't have shown here today but like a Haas is a really great choice you have to have a foot ascender before you can use a knee ascender though you cannot use a knee ascender alone without a foot ascender so definitely go foot ascender first and know that you don't have to have a knee ascender to really do srt effectively you also don't need to have a hand ascender with the right technique you should be doing most of the work with your feet which is either 1 or 2 depending if you got the knee ascender other things that you'll need for basic srt are some kind of hold up method you need to be able to pull the climbing system up with you that can be as simple as taking your land or over your and clipping it in and then tighten it up down here or it can be as complicated as a chest harness and there's there's a ton of different options right but all you really need is for when you stand up for something to be pulling the Rope up with you and tending it higher than your belay loop would by nature and you see I'm able to accomplish that with just taking my lanyard over my shoulder so I think that's the basics for basic SRT climbing if you're gonna be spur climbing you're gonna need all of the stuff that we discussed you'll need a lanyard which we haven't talked about yet we have a whole video for lanyards as well but if you're gonna be spur climbing you will need Spurs I think that I think that the Gecko Spurs are by far and above just the best options available I don't think there's a better carbon-fiber spur available especially not for the price and then in the aluminum range with the euro style I think those represent like the apex of quality and form they're really cool they're super light they have the best cuffs they you know really nothing else compares to those and then the new steel ones the notch gecko steels you know I at the price point better than did anything out there for a whole set and like when you compare them to some of the older brands that are out there that are you know a single straight piece of steel with a leather tee pad or something it's it's hard to imagine why anyone would pay more for that so I think if you're gonna be spur climbing notch gecko Steel's best bang for the buck maybe the gecko aluminum's or something like that would be a good choice lanyard you have to have a lanyard to climb whether you're sport climbing SRT climbing or DRT climbing you're gonna need a rope which we talked about and you're gonna need a lanyard the whole video about lanyards where we talk about the difference between mechanical adjusters double-ended adjustable or things like that you know for me I generally do like a shorter lanyard that's less out of the way and I will usually go for a simple traditional setup like this with a regular normal prusik and a hitch climber pulley I like snaps I think a snap on the end of the liner is nice and the triple action snaps are as good as any for me but a simple soin lanyard out of sterling Tritech always with a prusik is is a really good choice generally a shorter lanyard i think is better long laners can be more useful but they tend to get stuck if you're gonna be climbing DRT or for a lot of SRT applications a friction saver is going to be super handy it's hard to beat a rope soin friction saver with big ring and a little ring and a prosthetic on it with another little ring you can use that as an adjustable friction saver with or with you can use it without the prospect on it they're very robust they're a good bang for the buck but you can also get really complicated stuff like you Sabres and some of the toy fool Berger products I think like the pulley saver and stuff like that are very luxe and are really nicely made the thimble saver really specialized premium tools but if all you need is a friction saver the rope logic adjustable friction saver is great there's all whole video on friction savers there's a ton of different versions whether you're talking about like the 2 or the leather or whatever but you can check out that whole video as well handsaws I've had a lot of different hand saws in my life I've kind of settled on these two as my favorite this is the Sugoi this is the original hand saw that I was rocking out in the field and I chose it because it was really big and it was long and it had this hook on the end that I could use to pull things to me which I thought was really handy I'm a pretty tall guy so a tall saw fits on my leg where I would always wear it really like these knotch towns because they keep it away from me and right when I bend my leg it doesn't hit me it doesn't catch me underneath the thigh like that but um I like this hand saw because it's long it has really aggressive teeth and I think that silky is by far the best there there some huge difference in quality between any of the silky products and anything else so really like this is what I always used out in the field now that I climb a little bit less I think that this Tsurugi is probably the best choice it's a little slimmer it's a lot lighter at least in the hand and this aluminum scabbard besides definitely being the coolest looking there's no doubt about that but this is the coolest looking one has the most rollers inside of it and is just the highest tech thing that you could ever imagine like slipping a really sharp blade and sawed in two so really like these Saru bees it just kind of exudes quality looks very cool and it's in a nice slim package which is great I think that's that covers like everything you need to climb a tree it's a long list but there are a ton of really affordable and really premium options from everyone when it comes to tool clips you can do something as simple as having this carabiner right here through the tool tunnel on your harness or you can get really premium options of locking tool carabiners from DMM or from rock exotica that are really nice there's also plastic ones from Petzl and from other brands that are used primarily for ice tools and have been kind of transitioned into the professional market the plastic ones do break we you know they're they're very affordable they're really nice but you won't break a the one from DMM or the one from rock exotica so i would definitely recommend checking those out or just using a simple carabiner in terms of bags or storage you're gonna need something to carry all this stuff around in we've got a whole video not only on tool carriers but also on bags we took the 28 most popular bags I generally will tend to lean towards like a big like kind of bucket style bag so I would look like it metolius haul bags or any of the notch bags are very popular where we have the new notch access Pro which you can open up and put all of your stuff into and use as a bucket bag so that would probably be my favorite bag the new access Pro would also have a ton of metolius bags and those are really great for just like storing big like heaps of rigging gear and stuff like that so right I think we covered it all Neil how did we do Neil Neil gave us the good signal there's a ton of stuff that you need you can always email us info at tree stuff comm to get customer service or you can email the media team media at tree stuff home or you can reach out directly to me Nick at tree stuff comm with any technical questions and we're always happy to help you out so this is a really long video if you watch this you were clearly really into it and trying to figure out exactly what you needed so I really hope this was helpful and please stay safe out there thanks for watching

Channel: TreeStuffdotcom

Views: 117,099

Rating: 4.8799033 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, comon, beginner, start, kit

Id: _JxfpHFinLw

Length: 21min 5sec (1265 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 23 2020