Gary Prentice

Depending on how much wear has occurred, it can be difficult to line the tap or drill up. I bought a helicoil kit, not realising it was a Neilson set, to find that the drill was bent! so be watchful. As you've only one attempt at doing it right I'd suggest dropping into an engineering works and ask them to drill it, if it needs it. (I've done so more than once)

Reading this elsewhere, it looks like the hammock tent was suspended from a dead standing stem about 9 ft above the ground. 2-3 people in the tent putting enough lateral force on a decayed root system and over it came.

Accepting that mechanical things go wrong/will go wrong, you can't get any better than this! No downtime for the owner and the machine is getting sorted without a load of fuss. What a great outcome. Well done GM

Talking about real world situations and pre installed lines etc In a real life situation I want the the lad who throws on a pair of spikes, runs up the trunk with a strop and uses whatever’s to hand to a) get to me and b) gets me down asap And as Wes said keeps calm and doesn’t panic!

Pictures?

Would you have to take it on a case by case basis? Climbing for a non-arb company (a landscaper say) where you wouldn't expect any staff who can climb to be present, the onus 'might' come back to you but I doubt it. Anyway, it's something that the person writing the RAMS should be considering and that you (or any subbie) should be asking about. I don't know the answer, but think that the responsibility probably lies with the company contracted to do the actual work. They write the risk assessment and if they can't meet the rescue climber obligation, then it's down to them to organise it, whether that means getting an employee trained or organising for one to be present - either provided and billed by you or by them getting someone suitable on site for the duration of the climbing part of the job.

Oy!! The amusing bit is listening to the disagreement, waiting for someone to invite me to take sides and then saying that it's an entirely subjective debate! I'm only there to price whatever work they want doing, not to advise them on the work to do. I can provide options towards resolving a problem but ultimately it's not for me to decide what to do. Their tree, their cash. If I'm feeling particularly perverse, I then try to find a third alternative that neither has yet considered just to cause even more conflict and argument. This can backfire though, as you end up writing a quote for even more options than you originally started with. Sometimes the little pleasures in life are just so rewarding.

Maybe I'm odd, but I find that situation quite amusing

Been asked to do some odd things to trees, but never never that! Maybe it's a French thing

Just the right height for a bar clamp for sharpening kneeling down, obviously!

Aren’t Atlas being particularly affected by Sirococcus tsuga? Very few locally here are still alive.

What's it taste like?

Only one and the details are a little sketchy. Incident with a lad ring a pole down. Long while ago, no rescue climber. Fire brigade couldn't get to him for some reason and a climber from a local firm went up - I presume the victims injuries prevented him descending but no-one was too concerned that he was going to die to the time delays. From memory, the rescuer said the main issue was that without stubs it was difficult to set something up to bring them both down on a single line. It was a long time ago, so quite likely everyone was on prussics (knots or loops), no whoopee sling, block, etc. EDIT: Does going up to newly qualified climbers imitating a frozen Koala to calm them down and help them get back to ground count as a rescue? Done that a few times.

Ain’t it nice when it’s clear that there’re fighting your corner?

FFS the intention is only to hit someone with it, not force them to eat it. That would be inhumane.

You could always throw the mag at them

Object Steve, not weapon! If you ever end up on the wrong side of the law, any words and terms used suddenly become extremely significant

There should be. I just get a bit bored and want to crack on, get done and get home. I suppose that if I needed to eat during the day it would be a different story, and not knocking anyone who does, we’re all different.

Ten pints of Guinness after work and you're sorted for the next day?

There's a fair difference between people though. When I was still on the tools I'd never eat breakfast and then not really bother with food all day - coffee and fags sufficed. I started weight training around forty, thinking that I'd better start taking some care of myself if I wanted to climb as an OAP, so needed to get a lot of calories. But food had to be in constant small quantities otherwise it made too tired and bloated to get back up the trees. Sipping high calorie protein shakes with liquidised oats and banana, olive oil etc did the job. Even now I don't need to eat. I dismantle a big dead beech this week, first 'proper' for a long while (and second week of my second cycle) and everyone else was stuffing themselves come lunchtime while I'm sat with a couple of litres of water. And my weights still within half a stone of what it was when I was 16.

To add to my last post, on a Mountain Rescue crag course I was told about another member who had done okay through the training until the last exercise. The task was to abseil down a rock face, secure an injured rock-climber harness to harness, cut the injured climbers rope and then continue downwards to the base of the crag. Pretty straight forward, with everyone on a second line belayed from the top for safety. Now this fellow had no issues with the previous days training, seemed confident in the abseil part and showed that he grasped the concepts. He got down to the victim, secured him and pulled a bloody great bowie knife out of the sheaf on his belt. First error was slicing a slash in his own buttock. With blood running down his leg he went to sever the victims rope and promptly slashed his cheek! Nice duelling scar. The victim wrested the knife off him as he then tried to sever his own line instead of the injured parties one, which they were both attached too by then. I can imagine a very similar scenario with many rescue ticket holders.

At last some pragmatism. Unless climbing and rescue is regularly practiced by the 'rescuer' you're pretty much screwed. I dropped a 'rescue scenario' into a live job one day, everyone knew the crack apart from the competent climber who was suddenly informed to get out of his tree cos I'd passed out in another one. The sheer panic in his face was comical, they let him get to the bottom of my tree and then had to stop the drill because he was panicking too much for anyone to have confidence in his own ability to ascend safely. Even after he knew that it wasn't for real, the adrenaline spoiled his performance and he pretty much forgot everything he knew anyway, so I still had to regain consciousness to walk him through everything. Try that with a lad with a ticket passed some time in the past.

Without a doubt, but that’s what they do. Chuck a set of keys to a teenager and boys will be boys. As ‘accidents’ go, it looks like a good one where no one got hurt or killed. The sheer stupidity of it beggars belief, but that manner of driving is fairly common place IME

Maybe it was last load of the day and knocking off time?

I used one on the same in the spring of 1987 to secure a maple that was splitting at the union of the co-dom stems. Drilling for a through rod below the union and for a cable (steel) above. Not an easy task for a newbie climber due to the length of the bits distancing you from the stem to begin with. Returned to the site after the storm and admit to a sense of satisfaction that 'my cabling' had withstood the elements. The entire tree had uprooted entirely but... Feel better or worse?