Fortunately it's easy for a groundy to tie most forgotten items onto the climb line. It gets interesting when you realize you forgot to take a leak after you get most of the way up the tree.
You fellas ever get kicked out of the laundromat for washing your ropes there? Had that happen to me once. It was pretty funny listening to the little Indian guy curse me out!
Yeah he got really pizzed when I said wtf why I've been washing my ropes here for over 2 years! Started calling me a mada flucky or something similar. Whatever that means? Then some other stuff in whatever his native language was. Poor guy he must have been having a bad day.
Nah I was just messing with him at that point. I used to just go to whatever one happened to be close when I decided the ropes were too dirty. This was before I used a friction saver so that was usually after working on pines.
Ddrt with a micro pulley at the anchor and the zigzag in place of the Blake's hitch seems the closest to what I'm comfortable with. I don't do much pruning so assent will mostly still be spurs. Looks very smooth and like way less effort to me. I don't like that the zigzag can't be installed midline though. I need to do some more thinking and research they all seem to have their own set of pros and cons.
Right now I'm just starting out, and use the split tail on a Blake's with a micro pulley. I haven't really researched any of the mechanical stuff, but I might play with a different hitch though.
Got a little help today so I tackled it! 80’ ish dead ash. Climbed to about 55’ by hooking using a tie in to another tree behind me. This tree was tallest of all of the bunch and so I was limited to tie in points and didn’t trust solely using it for my support. It’s the one in the center first tree right of the light pole. Had a back lean of nearly 12’ I’d say toward the garage and light pole. Plus that 30’ ish limb out the back making the lean worse. Climbed it set a bull rope for later. Went up a bit higher and pole sawed off that back limb in two pieces roped it straight down, let’s just say my arms are whipped now! It eliminated some of the weight as well as my concern of that limb being a bit fubar’d and breaking on my head when I finally dumped it from the ground. That’s my brother and 18’ of pole saw against that other ash. Looking north Shot of the pull line going out to the anchor point
Of course I set the video up and had it running til it started tipping then I shut it off to give her another nip and what happens? I miss it so here’s a couple stills mid fall... 28” bar on the 372
