Rope Wrench feedback

[Joe Loggs]

I used a pantin over my spikes the other day for srt access and it worked fine. Oh and dan about the throwline I meant not being able to use it ,say when your in a busy street, would you just ascend the tree drt or srt tying off on every branch.

[ClimbMIT]

Gripping a single line is not doing my arms any good.

 

I find this difficult as well but I really like the benefits of SRT and the RW. Anybody use a fixed cheek pulley attached to your climbing line with prusik hitch placed slightly above their friction hitch, slack tending pulley, and/or RW to create a mini 2-1 system? Of course the tail of your climbing line would run through the fixed cheek pulley and back down. Something I was thinking of trying out.

 

Thanks, Mark

Edited October 30, 2012 by ClimbMIT

[hilti6]

I've been using the rope wrench for a solid six months now and could not go back to working off ddrt. The only time i use ddrt is for access when not using a throwline. I can't bear the friction problems with ddrt. Using the wrench your rope can touch as many branches as it wants to and the friction never increases. With regards to tip reduction I just pop in a redirect and drop down into free space do all my cutting and then shoot back up the line after, easy peasy!

[John Shutler]

personally i think people are creating a problem that doesnt exist regarding redirects...

plan your climb work the tree, theres no need for mulitple redirects

im surprised more people dont know how to retrive there system back through natural redirects without having to climb back through them

[ben lightfoot]

Had my first real day on it today and also having never had an srt setup was chuffed about the speed of ascent and felt bad for not having a setup sooner. Enjoyed the wrench although a little difficult branch walking back in but on pines wasnt too much of an issue. Was great doing a line of pines jumped across doing three from one anchor, dropped down and went back up the first and jumped to two more. i could have changed over at each if i was on drt but was good practice. also going up to change from srt to drt wasnt an issue so thumbs up so far, just needs practice

[pat1987]

Can the foot accender be used with your spikes?

 

I have found getting my pantin to work well from under my spikes difficult at times. this lead me to thinking about fastening a pantin direct to the side of my spikes! has anyone else considered this? mine are steel so had considered bolting a pantin body to them. it would have to be done neatly and would be less easy with fancy carbon. obviously it would be of more benefit to those climbing full time srt really.

 

interested to hear peoples thoughts (am i crazy?)

[Rich Rule]

Does your pantin not fit on the outside of your spikes?

[Taupotreeman]

The pantin works better over the spikes if your straps are long enough.

 

I've been having a play with the ZK2 recently and both myself and my 2IC have noticed a problem. Not sure if this has already been raised before so apologies if it has. On the ZK1 you could slide the rope into the wrench without fully removing the pin. On the new version we've found that we've had to remove the pin completely. Already one has been dropped 15m out of a tree (and fortunately found) but is there no way of having some way of connecting the pin to the body just in case of a bad case of clod handidness? The quick release pin on the ZK1 was good; easier to get your hands around but they don't fit the ZK2. Is it just us that have this problem?

[Ewan Murray]

Its pretty tight Ian but you can roll it in takes a bit of pinching and twisting but can be done what diameter of rope are you suing?

[Taupotreeman]

Yale arrow frog (11.7mm) Ewan. My 2ic has had more use of it than me and reckons its pretty difficult, nigh on impossible to do. Even so, surely there must be some way of having some kind of measure to prevent the pin dropping out completely. I figure if you could adapt the old push button release with a free rolling sleeve around it that a small grade cable or fishing line or something could be attached to and a small eye soldered to the end of the pin that the other end of the line would attach too. Sounds simplistic I know but there has to be an answer other than being very very careful.