Rigging? Maybe not.

[Old Monkey]

I don't think I could ever safely judge whether to climb a tree or rig off of it from a picture. I am sure you made the best decision given the circumstances. I have a tree coming up this week that I am going to use a bucket truck on for similar reasons.

[High Scale]

I was a little dubious about climbing this Horse Chesnut,the one in the chogging down vid, I certainly didn't want to rig much off it especially since the guy who I was climbing for has zero rigging kit apart from old climbing lines, anyway, I did the tree and even rigged branches off it, no other choice and I turned up to the tree blind, no prior warning of what I had to do.

[dryadlad]

Good call on the walnut recon he would have split out , we use heavy duty ratchet straps to add some support if it looks to hairy or if there is visible movement .

[High Scale]

Walnut can be very weak.

[tockmal]

we use heavy duty ratchet straps to add some support if it looks to hairy or if there is visible movement

 

Yeah......done something similar with bull rope and block and tackle system for pulling and holding stems together while climbing. Good idea which can be applied to some storm damage jobs, like holding a hung up tree in place while the crown is distmantled.

[tockmal]

Any of the cross section of the basal wound?

 

We had to leave it at 4ft as it was riddled with nails, the wood in the stems and branches was clean and healthy despite signs of dieback in the top of the crown.

 

How did you identify the brackets as H. annosum? I hate pinning down those young fruiting bodies. Was it the spores?

 

Were you thinking Ganoderma?

 

I'm only asking as I've never seen it on walnut and its good to become familiar with these sort of uncommon combinations.

 

I've never seen Heterobasidion on Walnut either. But dats what it looks like to me.

[tockmal]

I was a little dubious about climbing this Horse Chesnut,

 

I'm not surprised!!

[Marc]

Nice thread, a lot of the trees I work with are pretty manky with a wide variety of fruiting bodies and defects. So I really make it a habit to throughly check the tree over.

 

I'm still surprised at what a tree can take, as in I look at some trees and wonder how its still standing, only to see another similar tree but even worse still standing.

 

Still you can never be to carefull.

 

 

One thing I was taught to do on a tree I think might be unstable is to start from the top, or at least try to remove 2 times my body weight, then tie in and work off that stem.

I rarely see this done by other climbers though.

[Pete Mctree]

We made the decision that using rigging techniques on this tree was not an option - as applying any excessive loading on either of the two main stems could result in total failure of the tree.

 

Would you consider rigging using two pulleys, one on either stem?

 

When the system was loaded (providing good rigging angles) it would share the force and reduce load on the weak union (by pulling it together)

[madclimber]

Must admit i often start from the top on unstable trees to decrease the body weight. As for rigging again i only do if necessary.