Ok here goes I'm gonna try to explain this without getting everyone and myself confused I always use a cinched limb for my srt entry. Why? I don't know but that's just what I do. I isolate my TIP and start hauling up my rope with cambium saver and Delta in place. I'll "set" the cambium saver and bring the Delta all the way back down, which now used twice the amount of rope that I will actually need. Slip the Delta over the rope and cinch the limb with my throw line still attached as a pull down.. I wondered for a while and forgot about it but now I need to know! What do you do when you don't have twice the amount of rope? Say you have a 90' TIP and only a 100' rope? I tried to contemplate this while in the tree the other day and just could not picture the setup. I fear the answer is so obvious I just don't see it.


Dan

It's easy. I regularly do it when neither end of my rope touches the ground.

Keep your delta on the ground with you as you haul up your rope and rope sleeve. As soon as you have the sleeve set and a few feet of rope pulled over the limb and back towards the ground tie a figure eight on a bight ( or an in-line figure eight, or a butterfly, or whatever you like) in the standing part of the rope. That's the one still on the ground with you.

You don't have to tie it in the end of the rope, just grab it where it is hanging right in front of you and tie your knot.

Then put your delta through the knot and put your throw line through the delta and screw it shut. It will help if you have a very smooth transition where you tied your throw line to your rope because as you pull the delta up into the tree the throw line will have to pull the rope though it at some point.

Since both ends of the rope would not reach the ground I would highly recommend that you tie a throw line to the delta or the tail hanging from the knot on the delta. That way you can move the rope back and forth to manipulate the end as it passes through the delta.

Hope that makes sense. If not let me know and I'll do my best to clarify.

ETA:



These help...

Ahh Haa ! Thanks for the quick response I understand fully. It makes perfect sense now that I think about it. Your using the other end of the rope through the sleeve first! I've been stuck on thinking the end with the Delta has to be up at the tip while doing this.

Thank you,
Dan

Another nice trick, if both ends do reach the ground, is to tie the ends of the rope together forming a continuous loop. That way you can use the rope itself as a pull down for the delta if you need too.

Just make sure you climb on the right side of the rope; not the pull down side. You usually won't get off the ground if you are on the wrong one.

That could get interesting with a rope walker setup! Make it 9mm Ez-bend so it feeds through the ascenders on the first stroke and one could get tired quick

Take a look on the "articles" page at "Tying off for SRT"

http://www.treeclimbercoalition.org/TreeTalk/article.cfm?articleid=174

Thanks to all for the help. It made perfect sense to me but I still went ahead and tried it out yesterday on a rafter just to make some visual memory.

Dan

Your welcome.

Thanks Joe for eminding us all of the excellent article you put together. I think many of us (myself at least) come straight to the forum bypassing the main page, so it's easy to forget all those excellent articles are there.

I notice that there are a lot of answers to a lot of the questions that come up on the forum among the articles section. I've learned more about climbing from all of the articles than from almost anywhere else. Well, almost.

Check out the articles on the home page menu.

I notice that there are not many that have been added lately. Why is that? We need a lot more of that stuff here.

Let's not derail this thread! I'm making a comment and reply to RR in the General Discussion area about the article stuff.

OK...back to limb cinching and SRT tie-offs.

If two people are climbing together and are both is carrying a rope then once a TIP is being cinched the second rope can be used as the line to pull the cinch down. The first climber goes up, unties the two ropes beneath the cinch then sets the second rope for the other climber to come up. They both switch to DRT and continue their climbs (if DRT is being used, that is).

When it is time to come down, the cinch is rigged again, one climber descends and when off-rope the climber that is still in the tree can tie the ropes together again so that when reaching ground the cinch can be pulled out.

I always want some way to get the rope out of the tree in case for some reason I don't make it all the way to the tip. A thunderstorm or bees can bring a climb to a stop before getting all the way up.

This is the way we did it while climbing high settings in the rainforest. Make the cinch just like Hunabku says, then use a second rope tied to the first rope for unrigging.

The beauty of what Ralph (RR) is saying is that, if climbing SRT, it is no longer necessary for everyone in a group of climbers to carry really long ropes.

The trees in the rainforest can be pretty tall with high TIPs and in the beginning we would all carry 300 foot ropes ( very heavy!) so that we could climb the higher settings on ground level tie-offs. Then from there I evolved to the use of limb cinches, whenever an isolated route could be achieved, still with both ends of the rope on the ground.

Now we rarely carry the 300 footers. Instead each climber is carrying a 150, and, when necessary, we tie them together as Ralph described.

In wild trees I never like to climb on a limb that has been cinched with no way to pull it back down in the event that I do not reach the TIP. There are too many things that can bring a climb to a halt before reaching the TIP and I simply cringe at the idea of having to leave a rope cinched in a tree, making it necessary to return at a later time to go up and retrieve it. While it is possible to rig a pull-down using throwline my experience is that this doesn't always work ( wet rope and large diameter limbs usually covered in wet moss with a lot of friction). I have had the throwline break when a really hard pull was necessary to "break" the cinch and get the rope flowing. As long as I am climbing with other climbers who have ropes I prefer to use another rope for the pull-down. I have never been unable to retrieve a cinch using this method.

Tying two ropes together is not a bad idea even for a ground level tie-off. Once the lead climber is in the tree and has transferred to another setting and the new setting has been tested, other climbers on the ground can untie the ground level tie-off, the climber can pull both ropes up, untie the connection then set rope number two with a limb cinch for the next climber coming up.

Take a look: http://www.treeclimbercoalition.org/TreeTalk/article.cfm?articleid=162

For the connecting knots I always use a re-threaded figure eight.

Of course none of this works if you are climbing solo with no other climbers carrying more ropes.

This will work if you are climbing solo:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LYRJqbeqcPY

I now use a Zeppelin bend to join ropes - so much easier to tie and untie. Of course as usual, try at your own risk.

Oh, and the nice high pine tree I made this vid in is now dead - very sad - and the small, tall pine right beside it is also dead. I think lightning got them, although I haven't seen the tell-tell signs of lightning. All the other pines, and there are a bunch of them, just not as good for climbing, all around them are perfectly healthy.

It's gonna tear at my heart when I start taking this tree down. It was the only one I could readily do free air climbs in.