Positioning Lanyard basics | Gear Review | Petzl Zillon vs ART vs Wire Core, Hipstar Flex

welcome to strider tree gear today we're talking about lanyards there's a lot of options out there so i'm hoping to clear up a little bit of confusion break down some of the pros and cons with a few of these different options and hopefully leave you a little bit more informed here we go so when i first started climbing i was climbing a lot of pine trees doing relatively simple removals and i started out with a steel core lanyard or wire core lanyard as some people call them now wire core steel core they have some key benefits over the more common arborist lanyards hopefully that's not making too much noise but i'm going to break this one down for you this is a i'm not sure who makes this there a lot of them are very similar rope logic i believe has one steel core lanyard that is marginally better than all the other ones on the market because the swaged connection isn't just the wire in it it actually has the cover included with the suede so it gives it a little bit of redundancy over time i've had these steel core lanyards i've had the covers pull back on them well before the actual wire is worn out and that can has a couple of downsides but primarily the thing you got to look out for with these guys is the fraying and the bending that can happen right here at the splicing point when they fail that's typically where they fail they don't often and they allow for some extra strength for things like hand saws especially no reasonable person is going to cut through this lanyard with a handsaw with your silky so there's a little bit of safety factor there whereas most of the rope lanyards one good swipe and the silky will go right through it this and one in particular has got a nice heavy snap which is critical for one of these because it makes it way easier to flick around the tree this is my long one i still use this one from time to time especially if i'm going to be rigging down or otherwise working in a big pine tree or pretty straight up and down i'm going to spend a lot of time with it i'm going to be using a big saw obviously a big saw or even a small gas powered trimming saw will cut through this eventually but usually sometimes you'll get a warning sometimes you'll you'll feel that catch or with the hand saw there's this great instagram video where a guy hits it three times with his still trimming saw and it's not until the third time does it actually end up cutting through whereas the rope lanyard just cuts through immediately so it is cut resistant it's not cut proof here's the a an example of where it probably got nicked with a saw at some point didn't even get through the cover but it probably should be retired but anyways this is the wire core pros it's strong it's a little bit easy to flip um around a tree because it's got a little bit of rigidity to it it's got some nice weight and a little bit of cut resistance the cons the downsides are are primarily around the functionality of it when you're up at an oak tree where your oak tree or other hardwood tree where you've got a lot of little spars and you're trying to connect at crazy angles it can be a little bit difficult to to manipulate this in the tree as opposed to a rope with with a caribbean or a weight on the end but a little bit safer has its advantages i don't use this often anymore all right so next here i've got a i just threw this one together real quick this is a basic rope lanyard we use a double fisherman's termination knot on a swivel or a swivel snap this is a triple locking snap so it's actually safe to use as a life support now these isc snaps have a known flaw where some of them will actually stick open so i'm not necessarily recommending this one exactly but i like having snaps over carabiners obviously a carabiner at the termination would work just as well they're just a little bit slower to get open than these nice easy snaps which you just grab and they're super super slick i've also got this sliding prusik with an eye on it for a variety of options that are it gives you a variety of work positioning options to help things out i'll have a little more detailed video later about some of those but this is a feature of the toefl burger ce lanyard which i think it's called the hip star flex now which is a great lanyard it's very similar to this setup right here it's got a pulley much like this for tending so this would be the other end this is a one direction pulley so you can tend your slack in that direction but it holds here the hip star flex this is basically the setup of the hip star flex carabiner prusik with an eye pulley and i just made this myself out of stuff i had lying around you can do the same there's nothing fancy about it it's nice to have the spliced eyes because they pull out of unions a little bit easier than the fat knots so you know take that for what it's worth and i think the hip star flex is around 240 bucks everything here you know you might save 50 bucks building it yourself and maybe even a little bit more if you go with cheaper components but it's not a huge price difference uh buying the hip star flex or building your own that is similar but some of the advantages of this it's really simple um it's got the you can tie the knot if i nick it i can cut it off i can go longer i can use a whole bunch of rope if i want and the nice thing about that is this can actually serve as a second double rope system if i've got you know 30 40 feet of rope behind me all but daisy chained up at my harness i can throw it around a branch and i can have my rep primary tie off one direction i can have my lanyard off another direction and and really have a long way to go and still be double tied so it gives quite a bit of there's there's some utility to that gives you lots of options it's also really easy to manipulate to flick around branches to to lob up and over something above me that's primarily why i use rope lanyards is for the the ability to just have the ease of use within the actual tree now personally i really like having a pulley to help tend the slack it makes a big difference in fact my go-to lanyard which i'll show you in a minute is the petzl xeon but another great way to do this is with a just a standard prusik with a carabiner now i'll have a pulley on this either direction so if you're going to attend it it takes two hands but the nice thing about this prusik as the second tying point if you look down here i might want to show this if you look down here so now when i'm climbing i can climb with this side right and it'll grab and if i'm connected here that's great i can also take this side and if i've got a short lanyard or if i've got another carabiner i can pass it around a tree in another direction and i'll actually be connected here but and connected here at the same time so it's got a two directional prusik here it goes both ways and holds but if i want to adjust it i can still adjust it it just takes two hands so that's that is the the downside versus the pulley where i can i can have tension here i can release it with one hand and i can tend it with one hand so pulleys are nice they're smooth they're great having a two directional prusik on your lanyard gives you some good options too for passing around branches or having multiple tie-in points so the downside of a rope lanyard like this is obviously it's not cut resistant at all even a silky or a handsaw can go right through it in one swipe i've seen it done it's very easy to do chainsaw same thing goes through like butter one of the ways i remedy this is my and i personally recommend that anyone with a rope land you do this so i actually use tritech i think uh sterling tritec is is the best lanyard rope available it's oversized i mean it's over strength so it's much stronger than a standard rope for the same diameter it's made of abrasion resistant materials and heat resistant materials so if like on occasion a rigging line doesn't land where it's supposed to and it runs across your your lanyard this will hold up better to that heat and that friction than a standard rope it's also a little bit cut resistant it's not as cut resistant as a wire core i don't count on it but if you nick it just slightly with your handsaw it tends to do things like this rather than cut all the way through it so this it also has incredible longevity like it holds up really well over time with very little reduction in in overall strength and then of course the minimum breaking strength is so high on this 11 millimeter tri-tech that even over time as that minimum breaking strength degrades you can still have a very high um buffer of safety built in so this is my personal lanyard this is i i use this is actually my my backup but i've so i've got sterling tri-tech here i've got it spliced at this end i've got the prusik for my different work positioning harnesses nicely attached it stays out of the way i don't even i can ignore it 90 of time but when i want to use it it's there i actually use an ise snap on my primary one but any old carabiner will do and the petzl xeon i use as my adjuster i absolutely love the xeon it's so smooth i'm in a lot of really pitchy sappy trees and the petzl xeon is not phased by pitch or sap it adjusts like a dream it takes no effort the downside of it is that it does require regular inspection it's not obvious when it starts to go bad but you have to look for the tiny cracks that could potentially form and then it's not going to be strong to side loading at all so that's something you got to just be aware of i don't often side load to carr this because it's so close to my body and that's an awkward position to do it so i haven't had any issues this is the second one i've bought now it comes with petzl xeon here is about 250 bucks and it comes with a slightly different rope it's not a cut resistant rope but it works beautifully i mean you can use it until it wears out and replace it which is kind of what i did or you can cut it out right away throw some tritech in there so it doesn't come with any carabiners but it's got the adjuster on it 250 bucks that's a little bit more expensive than the hip star flex but really similar functionality the main difference between the hip star and and this lanyard is going to be using a rope prusik for adjusting versus using a mechanical and for me when i'm in pitchy trees all the time i just can't do without the mechanical i i get so annoyed at rope prussics because because of how inconsistent they function once there's sap involved so this is my go-to all right a couple other little lanyards here this is the art positioner i've used this i like it it's a great device it's super compact out of the way very simple basically it attaches like any of these other lanyards pull here it holds if you hold this handle it releases now the pros of this device simple it's fairly universal it goes on a lot of ropes the downside and it's smooth and it hasn't hasn't been affected by sap it functions beautifully really as a device the reason i don't use it the reason i prefer the xeon is the gradual release the xeon this is kind of kind of clunky and i've got another video where i compare those two devices head to head in the tree and if you want more info check that out it breaks it down but it is a great device and i and i will use this occasionally like for climbing competitions things like that where i need the speed and i want it out of the way and i don't want any trouble works great that would be another way to another positioning lanyard and the last one i want to show you and you'll have to forgive me here in that i don't have uh i lost the one one of the little pieces on this hitchhiker this is a little known device it's actually a climb device called the hitchhiker hh2 and there's not many around if you can find one snap it up because it's really a fascinating device it uses this fairly simple mechanism that actually allows this to be either a lanyard or a climb system on its own and you can climb single or double rope on this without any change in the system so it normally has a little pin right here where you tie your prusik loop too on both sides but i just stuck up steel carabiner in there because it'll function similarly obviously this isn't exactly how it's supposed to go so don't yell at me too too much there but the idea is this if i have this on my lanyard as my lanyard i can adjust i can pull on the back just like you normally would it's a little bit stiff and it grabs here and but i could release it under tension just like any of the other prusik or pulley options pull here release and it'll function as a you know any old lanyard but the other cool thing is i can actually mount it around a branch throw a little munter hitch or something along those lines on this system right so if my neck is the branch this is i am now set up on it what would be a single rope system if i move this over to my harness this is actually still a rated climb system i can climb on this comfortably i can belay off of this just like i would a single rope system and i'm safe it's it's designed for this use so i can take my 10-foot lanyard wrap it around a branch and i can get nine feet away from that branch and that anchor point comfortably and securely using this device so it actually allows me to keep a much smaller lanyard so it's less hassle less hanging around less to get caught up in the tree and still have quite a bit of distance and and lots of options for my positioning so that hitchhiker's a little bit of a pricey piece for a lanyard because it's a couple hundred bucks plus just for that one device not counting any other hardware but once you're done you actually have a full climb system in addition to a nice lanyard so that's another good option that not too many people know about i've but it's it's a good one if you can find it again i think they're out of production right now there's still a few of them around i got lucky and found one about a year ago i don't use it that much because i like my short lanyard with the zig z on so if you want the uh the strider tree recommendation tritech for we rope zeon for all of your your pruning needs and for your big removals you can't do better than steel core as far as safety so those are the takeaways that's my quick primer on lanyards and adjusters if you've got any other questions be sure to leave them below in the comments and thank you for joining me this week strata tree gear catch you next time you

Channel: Strider Trees

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Id: tZ-zmENN03Y

Length: 15min 36sec (936 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 07 2020