All the other climbing disciplines mock us.
I was never taught by a tree climber the DdRT technique. I forced myself to learn it a couple years in. I was just getting through the kleimheist, distal, blakes, french prussik phase when the split-tail method was announced. Then I went through all the hitches on split tail. I kept trying to find what I was doing wrong. I had been a pretty good early climber, now I am having all kinds of issues, and slack tending and rope feeding that wouldn't quit and friction that was sucking the life out of my climbs.
I only lasted a few seasons 2:1. I couldn't progress. It was like I was running in quicksand. So I went back to what I started with, a real rudimentary setup that I later learned is used by competitive arborists in footlock competitions; twin line ascent using only a prussik. I'd fly to the top, fashion a munter on the biggest steel triple lock available and figure out a tie-off. Crude, but effective. 1:1 DbRT at it's bare minimum, but I became a better climber, much faster with less motion, less slack tending and 100% control of the friction in one place, rather than two.
I wanted to continue the ease of 1:1 twin line ascent, but on prussik you can't stop and rest, or do tree work on the way up; the prussik will lock up. To control both sides of the twin line, it seemed that you would need an ascender on each side. I bought a left and right CMI, and mechanically configured them together through one common axel and riveted the bodies together. This is 15 or 16 years ago. I trashed them after much use, better than a year, then the plastic components on the ascenders broke and failed, so I retired them.
(I still have them)
Then Kong came out with their dual. I climbed on those for like a decade. I kept going back to 2:1 now and then to see if there was something maybe that I was missing. Arboristsite was invented somewhere along the line and I got to glimpse more deeply into our professional community and who was using what, and why. ALL 2:1 DdRT, with a tiny, tiny smattering of SRT, much like today.
So Bermie, the answer to your question, we
are all so dug into the 2:1 system that its simply hard to see outside of it. SRT seems like it's expensive and requires lots of rigging, but that's simply not true. Only the bravest, or so it is said, venture that direction. Whatever. You need a handled ascender to go up, and a friction controller to go down, that is all.
1:1 twin line is even simpler and easier than either DdRT or SRT; no rigging, no anchoring, no friction savers, no hitches, no tying, setting, dressing, weighting, redressing. No slack tending. No rope pulling. No hoisting yourself.
Just attach and go. Some of the dually redundant dual ascenders really let you skip over some of the hard stuff. You can always go back and learn a more difficult 2:1 method , but I would start easy. Dual ascenders are almost like cheating, but there is no form of cheating here, just getting into the canopy safely and with as little physical effort and motion as possible.
You still need to learn how to climb the tree, but I really think there's an advantage to learning an easy rope ascent method first. Let the climber then decide, afer experiencing both, how he (or she) wants to go.
Right now, as it is, you learn the hard way and can climb the rest of your career using essentially the same 2:1 system. I acknowledge the risk in saying this, that veterans of 20 or 30 years will not see eye-to-eye with me. They been climbing on a distel hitch for 27 years and it's always gotten them up and around the tree.
I have no argument against that.
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