Safety question

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hosocat

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I'm not an arborist, but I'm interested in it and have been doing some studying. I'm curious about a couple things. 1. Why can a snap be double acting but a carabiner has to be triple acting? 2. I read occasionally about climbers needing an emergency descent plan, and carry along a figure 8 for that purpose. Why can they not just let go of their working lanyard and descend on their climbing line using their friction hitch? I'm just learning and have only climbed drt with a Blake's. Is the figure 8 needed for descent if you are climbing srt?
 
I only have an answer fornthe first question. A snap is used on a lanyard and used primarily for a secondary tie-in point, or a temporary tie-in point while the main climbing line is being moved. You can't really move around a lot with the lanyard in. With the main climb line, you can swing around, limb walk, and go all sorts of places.
 
Would the emergency descent line be necessary, generally speaking, if you climbed up only on spikes, like with a palm tree or branchless pine, and so you would carry a lifeline up with you and tie it at working level to attach a figure 8 to for emergency descent?
 
Technically a lanyard isn't considered life support. It's for work positioning. When flip lining up a tree on spurs it looks like it's life support to me though. Now you're supposed to already have a line set in the tree and be tied in twice for just about everything you do. But the folks who make these rules evidently don't do this for a living or they would starve to death.

As far as the figure 8, I keep one on my saddle. They're light and inexpensive and have lots of different uses. You're just supposed to have a quick way to the ground at all times. If you were on spurs and flipline 70 ft up and cut yourself or get in a hornets nest you might not be able to get to the ground in time if you have to wrap your line around something, tie your hitch then rappel down. Possibly with one hand. Spurring down would be just as bad. You could however tie your line around the trunk, install the figure 8 and rappel down. It would still take 20 or 30 seconds under ideal circumstances. Fighting wasps and trying to get everything set up correct would be bad if you unhook your lanyard and find out something isn't right. There also might not be a limb to place the rope over which would mean choking off on the spar. Then your hitch which is designed for Ddrt is now an SRT setup and will probably lock up. Where a figure 8 wouldn't.

When spurring up I usually have my climbing system already tied and connected to my bridge. In Ddrt I use the Hitchclimber system. The biner on the eye splice will come up from around my back and over my shoulder and be re connected to the Hitchclimber pulley. All I have to do is unclip it, put it around a limb or choke it on the spar then come down. Takes about 5 seconds. If I don't have the Rope Wrench on and am setup for Ddrt then a little added friction by dragging four feet a little on the way down will help keep the hitch from locking up under double the weight that it is designed for.
 

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