You've "brushed" your lanyard "at least a few times" and this is not considered a "poor tree habit??"
That right there is my problem with wirecores-i've nicked a lanyard once and it caused me to double check to make sure it never gets done again ever since. You nick a wirecore regularly and it's no big deal?
This post caused me to to do an informal poll at our shop. We've got sixteen climbers, seven use wirecores everyday, the rest regular rope lanyards. Five of the wirecores were nicked, none of the rope lanyards had a nick. Of course you are going to assume the wirecores are older so i asked around the crews which climbers had nicked their lanyards this year. Not counting the guy who cut himself out of the tree, three wirecores had been nicked in the last couple months, the last time i could find a lanyard that had been nicked was back in february. How odd.
Meh, i'm getting tired of beating a dead horse. To all new climbers, i guess it is now perfectly acceptable to nick your wirecore. When they come out with wirecore climbing ropes, all our problems will be solved.
beowulf,
If I nicked my steelcore, there'd be a fuzzy lump that would be hard to slide through my prussic/cam/grab. Can't have that, and I'd be embarrassed to show up with $2 worth of tape wrapped on a $150 lanyard.
And if the is the "wear" that treeclimber101 says will "tear up your hands" is caused by "grazing" his lanyard, I'm with you , dork has no place in a tree with a chainsaw.
But they are safer than a rope lanyard.
To say they are not, because the user feels more exposed is to say that automobile drivers would be safer if the airbag in the center of the steering wheel were replaced with a sharpened railroad spike aimed at their neck.
Tailgating would decrease, speeds would calm, everyone would cinch up their seatbelt, pay attention to traffic, no one would risk running a yellow. Driving in gerneral would likely become much safer than the airbagged world we have.
But every lapse, every fender bender would be an ambulance call or fatality.
It's an interesting thought experiment anyways...
Do safety guards, PPE, throttle locks, chain brakes, protocalls and best practices make us safer or make us complacent?
I know which camp I'm in...
RedlineIt