I think someone else had mentioned it in this thread that if it's an emergency don't worry about burning up your hitch cord, they can tolerate some serious abuse before failure... you may have to replace it though since it'll be glazed to hell. In fact, I've seen a similar scenario play out where an old coworker BLASTED out of a tree from 70' up after encountering a wasps nest in a cavity; we later looked at the hitch cord and aside from some minor glazing, it was fine.
Also, I'd suggest to keep your climbing systems and gadgets as simple as possible. Since you say you're getting back into climbing after some time, you might want to just keep things simple and basic for now. While those shiny new anodized knick-knacks are enticing, they do add a certain complexity to your climbing system that could later become a hindrance or limiting factor in your climbing. What I'd recommend is to just keep climbing for a little while longer and keep a running list of everything you hate about climbing... then figure out which things you hate occur most often when climbing, and then start looking for those fun new gadgets that solve that problem.
I'll get off my soapbox now and provide some recommendations:
- The ART Positioner 2 is worth it, and probably one of the best climbing-related purchases I've made.
- The Yale BlueMoon 11.7mm with a tight-eye splice is an awesome rope if you do a mix of MRS and SRS.
- A medium or large rigging thimble/ring. These are super useful when climbing SRS. If you are doing a canopy anchor tie-in, tie an alpine butterfly in your climbing line, thread the ring into the loop of the butterfly and snug it down, then pass the end of your climbing line through it and send it up. Alternatively, if you do a basal anchor you can do the same thing on the rope going up in the tree so that if you need to be rescued and you happen to be floating (no lanyard attached and you're not stuck), another climber can come over and thread their climbing through the ring and lower you via MRS.
- If you get into SRS, a SAKA can be made relatively cheaply with a chest ascender, Purcell prusik, and some bungee cord.
- If you find yourself climbing a lot of conifers or other resinous trees, mechanical prusiks like the ZigZag really are worth it. They won't gum up on you as bad as a hitch cord and are cleaned pretty easily.
- I also really like to have the Notch Rook pulley on my bridge in place of a ring. If you can get it on sale or for cheap, I'd recommend it, otherwise I'd wait or not get it.
- Chap pants! Although not directly climbing related, they are well worth the price. I have a pair of the Clogger Ascend and Zero chap pants, and they are 100% the best overall piece of gear I've bought in my career. Highly recommend.
- If you want to preserve the life of your hitch cords a little longer (especially since you're using a friction saver), whenever I do a long descent I'll attach a carabiner to one of the side rings of my bridge and tie a munter-hitch with my climbing line below my hitch-climber. I'll then fully compress/disengage the hitch and lower myself via the munter. There's still some friction being put on your hitch, but the overall friction is distributed between the hitch and the munter. You'll get some pig tails in your rope, but they go away once you start stacking your rope back in a rope bag.