I made a horrible mistake.

I made a horrible mistake last Sunday morning. I split a white oak limb between me and my safety lanyard. Here are some pictures, I had to cut my layard to get myself out of it. I had a climbing line set high in the tree as a TIP, and the lanyard was around the limb I was working on.



From where my finger is to where the distel hitch rests in the picture is how far the hitch slid as the limb split and pulled me tight against it. After everything came to rest. I could not releave any tension and had to cut the lanyard.



This is a picture of my right D ring. It is deformed. The left one is gouged but not bent, it was the hip that had the distel on it.

I am usually very aware of the possibility of a split and do not expose myself to this sort of thing happening.

I attribute my mistake to a couple of things. I was just finshing up an 80 hour week between trees and the Fire Dept., I was tired and should have taken things a little slower. Things were not going at the pace I was expecting so I made the decision to go a little bigger on my drops to make room for the limbs I had to rig down.

Glad you did not hurt more than your pride. As the old saying goes "we learn by our mistakes".

hanniedog said:

Glad you did not hurt more than your pride. As the old saying goes "we learn by our mistakes".

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I am really glad I walked away from this one. I had read a thread last year where someone else had made a similar mistake and ruptured his intestines. This is one of the reasons I switched to a hitch instead of a mech. adjuster on my lanyard. From everything I have read, a hitch will slip between 1000 - 1500 lbs of force where the "Gibbs" style adjusters break at around 2000 lbs.

I do not know for sure if it made a difference, but the lanyard was glazed where it had slipped. I do not ever want to experience that again.

Your pic's didn't show up.

I made a horrible mistake

Glad you are OK, it can happen to any of us.Mine was the Top of a Tree that split. Now days we have the Friction Savers with a Prusik on them. But back when it was just a Rope or Flipline around that Tree. Live and learn

Glad you're OK .
Replacing a bit of climbing gear is not a big deal.
Thank God for the T.I.T.S. system.

ozzy42 said:

Glad you're OK .
Replacing a bit of climbing gear is not a big deal.
Thank God for the T.I.T.S. system.

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Thanks. You're right, replacing gear is a small thing to do compared to how it could have turned out.

I am not familiar with the acronym T.I.T.S., care to elaborate?

glad you are ok. freaky stuff.

pavement99 said:

glad you are ok. freaky stuff.

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Thanks Luke.

TreeCo said:

Glad to hear you're OK!

TITS=Tie in twice, stupid.

A similar thing happened to a friend of mine about ten years ago. He was stuck fast and not able to breath for a few seconds...and then the limb tore free freeing him.

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Lol, I figured it was something like that. "Fortune favors the prepared mind". I have a multitool attached to the rear of my right leg loop. Really came in handy.

I've been processing this incident over and over in my head for the last couple of days. Reassesing my techniques and equipment.

Luke should be able to get me everything I need to replace the equipment That was damaged and everything will be up to my standards soon.

Ghillie said:

I am not familiar with the acronym T.I.T.S., care to elaborate?

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If I had to guess it means Tie In Twice Stupid, but I could be wrong.

And I'm glad you were tied in twice. Good that you did not get crushed. I actually had a similar problem once where I had my lanyard below a cut that went wrong. It peeled away rather than closing at my notch. It was a piece that was going to create some shock load so I had double wrapped and tied off tight to my lanyard. The double wrap was enough to stop the split but it still pulled me in a bit.

Glad you're OK Ghillie. I had a large Hickory chunk peel on me about 18 years ago. It drug me down the spar before it broke off. Definitely a learning experience.

Just learn from it and move on.

Glad you are ok. I had a horribly ego bruising moment myself this weekend. I suppose as long as no one is injured and nothing is damaged, mistakes are one heck of a learning experience.

What happened to the pictures?

rmihalek said:

What happened to the pictures?

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Are they not coming up? I just added them to the bottom of the original post for those that cannot see them.

As everyone already said, real glad your okay. I think I am even more glad to see your back to working and recovery is going well.

God BLess.

Stihl-O-Matic said:

As everyone already said, real glad your okay. I think I am even more glad to see your back to working and recovery is going well.

God BLess.

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Thanks to all. I have to say, I expected to be berated for such (in my mind) a stupid mistake. As I have said before, I have been taking stock of my techniques and gear since that morning.

Today I finally got to the point where I decided to post about it and let my peers have a go at me. I'm tired of beating myself up about it by myself.

As some of you know, my profession is firefighter. Some would say treework is just a hobby for me. I don't see it that way, a hobby, I am trying to build a reputation and a business that will be "full-time" when I am able to retire from the fire dept. I take my treework very seriously, and hope my work shows it.

I appreciate everybodies comments so far and I hope that someone can learn from my mistakes or at least bring safety to the forefront of their mind. We all need a reminder now and again.

Be safe!

You better get to a doctor dude. Make sure there ain't no blood in your urine or stool. I can't believe the D -ring bent but you didn't. Oh Boy, that is something. Check those inards out for real for real.

you the man, ghillie. glad you made it out of that situation. stay safe.

You never told us how you managed to split the limb?

I am mighty curious how you could bend the d-ring and not be completely squooshed by your saddle!

pdqdl said:

You never told us how you managed to split the limb?

I am mighty curious how you could bend the d-ring and not be completely squooshed by your saddle!

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As far as I can tell, I was trying to drop too much weight at once. The limb was about 18" in diameter and I had not gone out and dropped some of the smaller branches off of it. The "go big or go home" mentality bit me. It was also pretty close to another branch union below the cut. I am trying to get the picture of after the fact to post. My ground guy that day was videoing with his camera but when he saw things go badly, he slammed the phone shut and it did not save.

Maybe I should have cut quicker. I don't know for sure.

As far as the ring bending, the left side was slipping due to the distel hitch. I can only figure that the right side (terminal end rope snap) was pulling more due to the friction of the lanyard on bark.

Edit: I had undercut the limb about a third of the way, it split on my top cut which was directly over the undercut.