A couple of weeks ago, I was climbing with some tree workers, some were very new to climbing on rope. The least experienced of the group was descending on an 8mm bee-line michoacan, tied to velocity rope. He was descending nice and slow, I was watching him from the ground. He asked me about the speed of his descent which was VERY slow at that point- "Is this speed ok, can I go any faster?". I told him he could go a little faster, that his ungloved hands will let him know if he is going too fast. He sped up to what I would call a normal descent speed, and stopped about 8' above the ground. As he dangled there next to me, we talked about friction, and heat etc. He decided to descend the rest of the way to the ground but could not. His hitch was completely and utterly locked to his rope. He tried to ascend in order to loosen the cord... not a chance. I put my whole body weight on his hitch trying to break it... nothing! We managed to disconnect him from his system, and belay him down to the ground without issue.

This was very perplexing. I started examining his rope, it was covered in pine pitch, the bee-line was essentially glued in place. The heat from his descent, which was not fast, or even close to being uncontrolled, had liquefied the pitch, and saturated his hitch. The stopping at about 8' and hanging there allowed it to cool, and glue his hitch to his rope, and the coils into one solid mass.

This could have been a real problem, had he been climbing alone, or if he had been at height.

Crazy. Wash your ropes.

Yep, I've had pine pitch stop the hitch on my main climbing rope and lanyard. Curious though, were you on a pine that had been pruned at any time in the past or were you in the woods on a wild tree? Out of many climbs on wild whites I've had this happen once, on "domesticated" white pines it seems to happen just about every time.

I've never removed pitch from my rope, just keep climbing on it and it disperses nicely. I did wipe down a seriously gummed up hitch cord with rubbing alcohol once. A strategy to use when an e2e hitch cord gets gummed is to lock off the down rope and retie the hitch with the gummed side facing out. Always smart of course to carry a second split tail on your harness.
-AJ

Moss, we were climbing a White Oak. As for the rope in question, I suspect it had been used on many removals, and pruning jobs in the past.. I cannot say with certainty because it was not my rope. I had problems with pitch binding after climbing some Douglas Firs in Oregon. I did just that, lanyard in re-tie with the pitch facing out.

hook

Ok, that makes sense. So his rope was preloaded with old pitch, and the friction heat brought it back to life. I guess that's a big problem for work climbers who have trouble keeping pitch off ropes. I've heard work climbers mention that they have a dedicated rope for doing conifer removals, makes sense.

Climbing with Quabbinclimber in a white pine a few weeks back pitch was causing my Tachyon to get stuck inside a 3/4" ID conduit cambium saver. The tail of my rope had dragged through a mass of pitch where a big limb had been trimmed, probably several years ago by the look of it. Par for the course, on certain trees you have to do line management to prevent the tail from dragging through pitch and/or poison ivy. My throwline has gotten pretty gummy when it contacted green white pine cones in late summer, at that time of the season the pitch is running dripping off them like honey.
-AJ