Help with friction climber

[will.morris]

Its an old photo that I took when i was just playing around with the knot, I think its just not dressed up properly.

[normandylumberjack]

Had a bit more of a play today, and found that using a self locking footloop helped tend the slack and also shared the load between arms and legs. will try a pantin-m-bob as i think that would self advance better.

Finding the trouble with low and slow is there aint a lot of rope below to add weight.

[Marc]

Had a bit more of a play today, and found that using a self locking footloop helped tend the slack and also shared the load between arms and legs. will try a pantin-m-bob as i think that would self advance better.

Finding the trouble with low and slow is there aint a lot of rope below to add weight.

 

Forget about self-tending it's not important, it will with the right knot and enough rope do this, but you just got to tend it by hand most of the time, besides it not self tending is a strength in some users hands, it you want a self tending device the art stuff does it better. But for me the hitch is a better tool for daily commercial climbing.

 

Footloops or pantins avoid if you can, over use of a pantin is just a pain, I do use mine but the least amount of time possible, best used with one foot against the trunk.

 

Sit back is a thing of preference, I,m actually moving to more and more sit-back as it lets me fully break off the hitch which counters friction in other parts of the tree, I usually have the tail of my line dragging through other forks as it helps to manage the twists you can get from a vt, and allows me to redirect my hitch back up and through without actually going back up and through myself.

 

Probably what I am saying makes no sense, it never does until you see it being used, which is the difficult thing you really need to see good hitch climbers in action. Get either the Knute or vt grabbing reliably and also advancing easily it should be very light, paying out slack should be with finger tip ease even under load. And get climbing try to not body thrust use the tree and advance the hitch by pulling slack through.

 

In short a hitch climber will allow you to move differently over a standard Prussik, you can now tend slack easily with one hand, a hc gives you ultimate tunabilty so many knots and cord combinations, the 3 holes also allow you to easily attach a second line or use and m rig among other things.