Help with Fall/Arrest Rope Setup

Jonny Sno wrote:

Here's what my proposed layout looks like when using a prusik. 

Definitely gonna die. 

Actually you will will be pretty safe because you won't be able to climb very well. I recommend you do a lot more reading and practice on the ground first. Use backup knots!!

Also how do you expect to girth hitch your rope above you and then climb up to it? 

Nathan Hui wrote:

The Metolius safetech harnesses have gear loops rated to 22 kN.  Even 10 kN will be enough, as you shouldn't be taking a FF1 free fall.  If you do, you've done something really wrong (as in the tree's disappeared beneath you, and then something else weird has happened so that you're falling onto a slack tether)

Yes, a properly dressed prussik will take 200 lbs of weight.  Keep in mind that it is common to protect low angle terrain with a single prussik, and that rope teams on glaciers will shorten up the rope with a prussik.  The key term here is properly dressed - a poorly dressed prussik will not necessarily grab.

Given that harness tie-in points and belay loops are only required to hold 15kN, I highly doubt that they engineer their gearloops to hold 22kN. 

And to the OP, the easiest way to do this would be to use a throw line around a high, sturdy branch instead of essentially lead climbing. If it is possible to do this, here's what I would do:

Throw the rope over the branch and then pull my climbing rope over the branch using the pull cord

Tie in to one end of the rope and put 2 friction hitches or ascenders on the other end, clipped to belay loop. If you decide to go with friction hitches, I would suggest using the bachmann hitch or the helical because they will be much easier to slide up the rope one-handed.

I would skip the actual sitting in the harness work part the first time around and instead, climb all the way to the anchor branch. There, would wrap my tether around the trunk or a branch and then untie from my climbing rope. Then tie one end of the climbing rope around the trunk to create a fixed line. Then you can rappel down using a friction hitch on the brake end to go hands free, stopping to do your work if you want to do it top down. 

If you want to do your tree work ground up, rappel back to the ground and then use your friction hitch/ascenders to climb the rope back up to your spots and just hang in them to do the tree work.

When you're done, untie the end from the trunk and then wrap the rope around the trunk to set up a rappel. Rappel to the ground and pull your rope. If you anticipate having to come back later to do more tree work next year or something like that, consider leaving a pull cord and tying the ends to something at the ground (maybe a tent stake in the ground or a nail into the tree trunk).

Edited to correct some poor wording

eli poss wrote:

Given that harness tie-in points and belay loops are only required to hold 15kN, I highly doubt that they engineer their gearloops to hold 22kN. 

No, you're right.  I forgot what "full strength" meant for harnesses.  All components on the Safe Tech harnesses are good to at least 9 kN, according to their website.

If your goal is to learn tree climbing techniques, The Tree Climber's Companion by Jeff Jepson is about the best introduction you could ask for. There are a lot of arborist / tree climbing forums out there - but the techniques are somewhat specialized, and having a good foundation will help you get your bearings. Understanding basic tree health is important. (eg, blindly trusting that first branch 30 ft off the ground probably isn't a good idea.) 

You don't necessarily need a specialized arborist saddle to start, it's easy to survive without the side-D attachment points. A minimal tree-climbing setup doesn't require the use of the prusik, nor ascenders. You will want a lanyard. 

I get the impression you may have hunting in mind? If so, you may find the Saddle Hunter forums helpful. 

To answer one of your questions, a prussik will hold your weight just fine. What we don't know is the rest of your rigging. If you have a 11mm static line that is securely anchored to a sturdy limb above then a prussik would hold your weight.  If that's what you're doing then you would likely want 2 prussiks, one for your waist and one for your foot, both backed up to your harness with locking carabiners. 

Nathan Hui wrote:

  Not entirely sure how you would do it on your harness, but I would rig it to gear loops if you have fully rated gear loops, such as on a Metolius SafeTech harness (I have one, which is why I'm suggesting this method).  If you don't have fully rated gear loops, maybe throw a sling around your back?  Tie off a pair of slings to a haul loop?  Might need to be a bit creative about this.

Or just use the right equipment for the job. Tree climbing is an entire industry with thousands of employed professionals and several companies that manufacture gear specifically for climbing trees. There are tree climbing certifications courses and even OSHA has laws regarding commercial fall protection techniques in tree climbing. There are harnesses with side positioning D rings that are used for work positioning and several types of different lanyards for positioning while climbing trees.

OP: What you need to do is visit an arborist forum if climbing a tree is your goal. They are better suited to answer your question since this is not a tree climbing forum.

Positioning lanyard in use with foot spikes.

Jonny Sno wrote:

Here's what my proposed layout looks like when using a prusik. 

An adjustable-length tether like that is useful, but coupling it to your anchor like that means you can't use the anchor and the adjustable-length tether separately. Additionally that Prusik is going to be under full body weight, which is going to make it pretty tight and hard to adjust. I'd look into existing solutions for adjustable tethers: Purcell Prusik or Kong Slyde. I personally have the Petzl Connect-Adjust, but if I didn't already have it I'd go for the Kong Slyde, as it does the useful part of what the Connect-Adjust does for a lot cheaper.

But the real answer here is to hit up an arborist forum and learn what solutions already exist for your situation. There's nothing wrong with trying out your own ideas, but I think you'll get better results if you start by understanding existing systems. That way you build on other people's work and improve it, rather than starting from scratch and doing a lot of work to figure out what other people have already figured out.

Jonny Sno wrote:

Additionally, is a Prusik safe enough to take 200 pounds of body weight when I have to lean away from the tree and put my weight on the harness? Or should I get an ascender?

A prusik and other hitches are frequently used in self-rescue situations (e.g., injury partner, working around rope damage, etc..).  Still, for me it is not considered a "best practice" to rely on a single hitch by itself to protect life and well being.  So we'll usually have some kind of backup.

Although not ideal, the backup can also be an independent hitch.

However, if your technique to get up the non-limbed trunk requires untying and retying hitches, I would definitely look for a different way to attach as I believe the repeated untying and retying would get tedious and probably make it difficult to generally focus on safety.

I'm not convinced this is a real post and not an elaborate trolling effort, but here goes anyway...

First, it's hard to see in your picture, but I think you've tied your prussik in a way that's pretty dangerous. If I'm seeing things correctly, you've closed the loop with a figure 8. Don't do this... This is not an appropriate knot for this purpose. Use an overhand with long tails (maybe that's what's in your picture? hard to tell), or better yet, use a double fisherman.

But on to how you do this... you're definitely over-thinking this. All you need to climb a tree (really, to climb a rope attached to a tree) is:

- A throw bag to get your rope over the highest branch you can reach (you can use a bunch of carabiners tied to a string or anything with some amount of weight)

- A rope to climb (real static rope would be best, but anything with a safe working load of a few hundred pounds probably won't kill you). In order for a prussik to catch, it's going to have to be something fairly thick (> 8mm?). The piece you have above isn't gonna cut it 'cause it's too short to make any real progress

- Two pieces of thinner cord (these are your prussiks)

- Three locking carabiners

- A harness

- A sling to make a chest harness if you want to get real fancy

Tie the string to your rope, throw your bag over a big branch, pull the string. You now have a rope that runs over the branch and back down to you. Attach your prussiks around both strands of rope -- one should be a foot prussik the other a waist prussik -- then climb. I won't go into detail on how to climb a rope with prussiks, 'cause if you can't figure that out you probably shouldn't do this. You should be able to learn everything you need to know from youtube. You could rig up a texas prussik or something fancier, but you really don't need it to just get up a tree. One comment is that you shouldn't extend the waist prussik with the lanyard the way you have in the photo above. This will put it out of reach and limit the amount of vertical progress you can make. If you get rid of your long dynamic lanyard, your potential fall distance will be much shorter and you don't have to worry about the force generated in a fall. When climbing on prussiks, there really shouldn't be a risk of free-falling or you're doing something wrong. This should allow you to sit back and work without issue, but you can add a chest harness if you want to be really upright. Also, if you're worried about the prussik slipping (it shouldn't and won't if you did things correctly), tie in directly to the rope you're climbing before you sit back on your prussik (reach down, tie a big overhand, clip to your belay loop with a locker).

If your rope isn't long enough to get all the way up the tree, or you can't get a clear shot at a tall-enough branch, just get the rope over a lower branch, climb to that branch, secure yourself directly to the trunk above that branch (that lanyard would be good for this), take yourself "off belay" and repeat the process of throwing the bag over the highest branch you can.

eli poss wrote:

Given that harness tie-in points and belay loops are only required to hold 15kN, I highly doubt that they engineer their gearloops to hold 22kN. 

And to the OP, the easiest way to do this would be to use a throw line around a high, sturdy branch instead of essentially lead climbing. If it is possible to do this, here's what I would do:

Throw the rope over the branch and then pull my climbing rope over the branch using the pull cord

Tie in to one end of the rope and put 2 friction hitches or ascenders on the other end, clipped to belay loop. If you decide to go with friction hitches, I would suggest using the bachmann hitch or the helical because they will be much easier to slide up the rope one-handed.

I would skip the actual sitting in the harness work part the first time around and instead, climb all the way to the anchor branch. There, would wrap my tether around the trunk or a branch and then untie from my climbing rope. Then tie one end of the climbing rope around the trunk to create a fixed line. Then you can rappel down with a friction hitch, stopping to do your work if you want to do it top down. 

If you want to do your tree work ground up, rappel back to the ground and then use your friction hitch/ascenders to climb the rope back up to your spots and just hang in them to do the tree work.

When you're done, untie the end from the trunk and then wrap the rope around the trunk to set up a rappel. Rappel to the ground and pull your rope. If you anticipate having to come back later to do more tree work next year or something like that, consider leaving a pull cord and tying the ends to something at the ground (maybe a tent stake in the ground or a nail into the tree trunk).

Edited to say I should have read the whole thread before posting. Eli beat me to it with this description.

Except I wouldn't rappel on a friction hitch 'cause that's not gonna be possible. I think what Eli is referring to is rappeling (on a proper rappel device or a munter), backed up with a friction hitch.

If, for whatever reason, you can't get a string over a branch 30 feet up (you should be able to, stand back, swing your weighted string hard, and make sure you've stacked the string so it feeds nicely as your weights fly through the air), then you have a different problem that's much more akin to real aid climbing. If that's what you're up against, I'd say you don't have the gear for this. The best you can hope to do is improvise a climbing belt (look at arborist supplies to see what a legit one looks like and how it works). I've done this, and it works, but it's neither particularly fast nor safe.

Mark Berenblum wrote:

I can assure you I'm not a troll. I've tried arborist forums and haven't gotten any help really. I also don't want to spend $200+ on an arborist harness. As for the throw rope it just isn't practical for my applications and not doable for most of the trees I need to work on. We'd be talking about hitting a 10 inch target at 60 feet on some of them.

The prusik pictured is tied with overhand so no real problem there I think. The tether around the tree is short, yes. It wont be girth hitched higher than 2-3 feet above my head at any given time. This is ok for my purposes because I'm using two tree steps that I'm leap frogging up the tree. As I move up the tree on the steps, I move the the girth hitch "anchor" up the tree as well. The most danger in this situation is when I've stepped up and there is slack in the tether going from harness to prusik. For this reason I will probably add a linemans belt around the tree at waist level.

I know this doesn't sound efficient but I've done it several times and can get 50' up in 3-4 minutes. I'm just trying to make sure I'm using this application as safe as I can, whether ropes, knots, devices,  back up redundancies etc etc. I absolutely appreciate all the advice given and am researching each recommendation deeply. I don't want anyone to think I'm ignoring their advice. 

If your rope is long enough, you would be better off wrapping around the tree or branch, then back to your harness.  This allows you to ascend and descend using just the Prusik.  Makes making minute adjustments easier then the SRT configuration that you are currently using.  This configuration also cuts your weight in half to make it easier to ascend by pulling on the rope.  Your friction hitch cord would be better with two tied eyes instead of a loop to help prevent cross loading of the carabiner.  You're basically using the alternate lanyard method of ascending, which is okay, but there are better options without spending much more money.  Definitely don't use the Connect or Slyde as they don't release easily under load.

Mark Berenblum wrote:

- A throw bag to get your rope over the highest branch you can reach (you can use a bunch of carabiners tied to a string or anything with some amount of weight)

I'm just guessing, but I think the reason he isn't using that system is that the lowest branches are 30 feet up. I'm not an arborist, but having hung plenty of bear bags, I can imagine that throwing a weighted cord 30ft is kind of difficult. Then again maybe my throwing arm is just weak. :)

The throw bag weighs from 12-16 oz. and the proper throw line is between 2-3 mm, you can easily throw that one handed to 30 feet, or if going higher use the between the legs, diaper shot, using both hands. After it is set take the bag off and tie the throw line to the rope.

Maybe I should use an ascender when I need to lean my weight back but use a prusik for fall safety?

The ascender really isn't needed as the Prusik will hold you.  It is one of the harder friction hitches to move and will always grab the rope.

If you want to continue to use your current system, you can tend the slack in the lanyard after you stand on the step, by placing a small pulley, screw link, or a swivel snap under the Prusik and clipped to the carabiner.  After you stand up, grab the rope with one hand, and below the pulley, or whatever you use, with the other hand and pull up.  This will push the hitch up getting rid of the slack.  You could also stand and tend the slack at the same time, almost eliminating any slack.

What's some really great value rope for my purpose? All the rope at the local climbing spots is like 150+ plus for a lot of feet. 

Jonny Sno wrote:

What's some really great value rope for my purpose? All the rope at the local climbing spots is like 150+ plus for a lot of feet. 

Unless I've missed something in this thread, you STILL haven't described what you're doing well enough for us to even answer the simplest part of what you're now asking. That is, static or dynamic rope?  The latter is the safer course for the vague shenanigans you seem to have in mind. If you want something less than 100 ft, I suggest you find a climber who has a short piece to sell you. New ropes, as you found out, typically start at 60 meters.

Gunkiemike wrote:

Unless I've missed something in this thread, you STILL haven't described what you're doing well enough for us to even answer the simplest part of what you're now asking. That is, static or dynamic rope?  The latter is the safer course for the vague shenanigans you seem to have in mind. If you want something less than 100 ft, I suggest you find a climber who has a short piece to sell you. New ropes, as you found out, typically start at 60 meters.

Which question? I thought I had. Happy to try again, thanks for your help/patience. 

Most arborist sites sell rope by the foot. Most are semi static and more durable than dynamic rope.  Treestuff is one of the better ones, with either free shipping or 5-7% off each order.