Beech Highline

[scotspine1]

Recent storm damaged Beech job from a place where we do a lot of work.

 

When I arrived at this tree and saw the crack it was a fell, no debate. Spoke to the client told him we'd need to fell the tree and he'd lose a lot of his old Azaleas and rare Rhodies plus a few other rare mature small trees. He asked if there was any other way to bring the tree down, so I went back up to the tree and decided to give a highline a go.

 

Only the third time I've used one in 18 years of climbing. Set a static Kernmantle between two 70ft Norway Spruces this allowed me to work on the Beech safely and bring it down causing minimum damage to underplantings. I was also using a breakaway lanyard of my own design for work positioning in the tree.

 

Hopefully the pics and vid paint a clearer picture.

 

[ame=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nlEniHedlx4]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nlEniHedlx4[/ame]

 

 

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Edited February 8, 2015 by scotspine1

[David Humphries]

That's smart Tim.

 

What type of pulley set up did you have for your climbing line attachment to the highline?

 

Much bounce open it?

 

 

 

Like the doors track

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[slack ma girdle]

Necessity is the mother of invention, good thinking batman.

[Adam Bourne]

Cool video tim.

 

Only ever used a skyline once. It seems round here that when you need one there's never nothing near by to do it to!! Then when you don't need it there's loads of options

 

Good stuff mate. What's your YouTube channel name? Your videos just play on the arbtalk site

[tree-fancier123]

wow - one of the best vids I've seen on here. Bit of rope and ingenuity and it's doable without a second mortgage.

 

Are many trees like that with a decayed trunk but top branches looking good?

 

There was a thread a while ago about a climber bottling a big lime with a root plate lifting up in the wind and a guy replied saying he was in Germany and his mates were asked to spike a tree like one in vid, then he refused and someone else did it and half the tree tipped and broke up while he was lanyarded in, fubared his leg, no more climbing

Edited February 8, 2015 by tree-fancier123

[Wooden Hand]

How'd you like the bounce?!

Any particular reason you didn't work the tree from top down?

[Tom D]

Nice video Tim, I'll bet it was bouncy, I can remember using two climbing lines off two different trees once to do something nasty, that was bouncy enough, thanks to being tied in to thin stuff....

[Mark Bolam]

Well thought out Tim.

That beech was shot.

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Arbtalk

[scotspine1]

cheers folks

 

 

What type of pulley set up did you have for your climbing line attachment to the highline?

 

Much bounce open it?

.

 

rope was running through the DMM Hitchclimber pulley, Petzl William ball lock on the highline. The krab gives you just the right amount of friction to keep the anchor in place, but if you want to move it along the line - you create slack and just kind of whip it along the highline until you find a good place for it.

 

huge amount of bounce, the distance between the Spruce trees was about 250ft+, but we took as much slack out the system as we could using a quick 3:1 and a Port a wrap. The Port a wrap is not being used as the main anchor, there's another hitch system/sling about 6ft up holding the line. On the other tree a running bow.

[Rich Rule]

Good thinking Tim,

 

Like the tune too.

 

I take it you set the highland with throw-ins or did you climb each spruce tree?