Swamp Fox and I are on track to climb with more than 525 kids during summer camp, which will end about a week before school starts next month. There has only been one rescue throughout all of this, and only because a split-tail seized up and the climber couldn't pull it down to descend.

The victim was a very pleasant and lovable 10-year-old girl named "Beth." Although her mom and younger brother have slender figures, "Beth" has inherited her father's rather large build and she already weighs about 105 pounds even though she's only about 4-foot-6. She tried for two weeks to climb on a traditional DRT system without much success, and then she finally agreed to use the super system we'd set up for the occasional overweight climber.

This particular super system is pretty typical in that it uses pulleys at both the top and bottom and gives the climber a 3:1 mechanical advantage. The main climbing rope that we used is a 150-foot New England Fly, and the split-tail was made from about 10 to 12 feet of Forestry Pro.

During a two-hour climb with all the kids from her group, "Beth" climbed to the top and hung out there for nearly the whole time. She would occasionaly swing between limbs, which usually causes the Blake's hitch to tighten. This has not been a real problem for us in the past, even though some pretty big people have climbed on this system. A few of them did have mild complaints that the Blake's hitch was a little hard to pull down, but nothing of significance.

In "Beth's" case, though, she was unable to budge the knot even when she put both hands above it and pulled down with all her weight. As tears of frustration/fright began to run down her face, I quickly climbed the adjacent DRT rope for the rescue. It took almost everything I had to pull down her Blake's hitch but after about two minutes "Beth" was on the ground.

Generally, the guiding principle is to avoid using two soft ropes when one of them is the split-tail. Most climbers probably don't consider the Fly rope to be a "soft" sheath, but the Forestry Pro is definitely a softie. Anyway, after a lengthy discussion Swamp Fox decided to replace the Forestry Pro split-tail with one made from Yale 16-strand that has a firmer sheath.

We've used the new split-tail at two climbs since the incident with "Beth" and it seems to be working much,much better than the old one -- but we're still not totally convinced.

Does anybody have other ideas/solutions?

BTW -- although "Beth" has finished her three weeks at summer camp, Swamp Fox and I decided that she didn't need to spend the whole winter worrying that she might have done something wrong. We've contacted her mom and invited "Beth" to be our guest at the next open climb.

I learned on DRT on forestry pro with a Blakes 4/2. I weigh 225lbs. The Blakes performed very well at my weight. The few times the hitch locked up on me, I just loosened the bridge on the knot/hitch. That seemed to always fix the problem. It seems odd that a 10yr old, 110lb child would lock it up like that.

The few (very few) times I climbed on a Fly Rope I noticed to be very soft cover with a tendency to bunch up on the mechanical gear(grigri) or in split tails, but that is just my personal opinion on limited uses ( I weight around 200 lbs).

My Split tails are made of smaller diameter (8mm) kind of hard rope with a waxy slipery coating on the outside.

Here is a link to one of my split tails photos.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/oldtimer1/3245257393/in/set-72157612329504287