old school

[billpierce]

Sounds like you would get on famously with a hitch climber pulley and distel hitch. Mid line attachable and easy to see how the hitch cord is wearing. All the characteristics of a device with the security and peace of mind of rope.

 

can you post a link of the sort of thing you mean?

[Mark Bolam]

get your groundie to pull the loose tail of your rope makes a 50ft ascent easy

 

Ive got to stick up for the old fashioned climbers,and as for better and faster that comes with experience. i work with good young climbers with fancy kit ,my trees are always on the deck before theirs.the thing they need more focus on at colledge is how to fell accurately,which in turn gives them more confidence to let off larger lumps.I was lucky to work with some older tree fellers who taught me things that i was never shown at colledge 25 yrs ago

 

 

How does that help on a Prussik then?

[Mark Bolam]

Totally agree about the felling btw.

[billpierce]

Around 10 years ago I changed from a prussik to VT hitch climber set up after a previous 10 or so years on just a prussik , had tried the VT and all the fancy hitches before at shows and dismissed them as fancy stuff for benders , decided one day that on Monday I would stick with the VT and pulley for a week and it was the best decision I've made in my career for speeding up and making it more efficient to saving wear on my body from thrusting arm over arm and not like you do on a prussik , it helped I was climbing the first tree with another climber who had mastered the VT as it gave me some confidence...

Since then I've looked at new techniques and kit different.. Or tried too ie like pulley savers are a god send once you have got used to having no friction!! SRT is a strange one but even for access on big trees it's worth getting a pantin and bodging up a home made haas if you don't feel confident working off a single line, for me it took one climb to get used to a VT and about 1 week for SRT.

Had to do arial rescue refresher on a prussik the other day and thought I would show the newbies how to body thrust , got to the branch all right although a bit out of breath but the prussik binder and slipped it's really an awful knot and frustrating when you see people struggling with it... It's a shame that there are so many good experienced tree climbers out there who if they just took the chance on changing there game plan and having a serious look at even a hitch climber set up would realise how much an edge shiney stuff can give you but you need to give it more than a rec climb.. Pretty sure that won't change any ones opinions as I know how stubborn vet tree climbers can be.. I still doubt I'll never climb on any thing other than a hitch though.

 

nah you've persuaded me to at least look into it!

[billpierce]

How does that help on a Prussik then?

 

cos they are helpin you everytime you thrust

[Mark Bolam]

Great.

Or you could just walk up a single line with a Pantin and HAAS without any real effort or help from the groundies at twice the speed.

It's a tough one.

[James Atkinson]

Why is there a breed of stubborn "real men" climbers out there, Prussic are horrible, fact. Yes you can do it, yes there cheap, yes it's less gear, and yes you should know how to do it if your stuck, but people wouldn't invent "shiny" things to make us slower or crapper. And for people who say "I can get the tree down faster than any other climber ever, in the history of climbers on this planet with my Prussic, grow up, your elbows will fall off and you won't be climbing very fast for long. "Drops the mic" I'm finished lol

[Darrin Turnbull]

At 35 years old i would of stopped climbing , but i decided to learn all the new stuff. And i'm still climbing at 49.

[Mesterh]

Where are all these horror stories people keep mentioning? I know of only 1 incident relating to the zigzag

 

If your worried about your zigzag do as I've been doing lately, back it up with a prussik. You have all the efficiency of the zz and the safe and reliability of a prussik. that way when your zz finally implodes as they all do the good old prussik will still be there to save the day.

 

Added bonus that using two climbing systems makes you twice as fast.

[timbernut]

I'm 47 and only changed from prussiks about 18 months ago to lockjack (and spam tin on long ascents), thought about using a couple today as a reminder, after readin this thread this morning, but my wrists just started to quiver!

Would like to have a go at SRT etc soon, anything that makes climbing easier and means You can do it for longer can't be bad😀