peds

Ah right, that's fair enough. Not the most elegant of phrasing, but absolutely a good point.

Absolutely, some could just be a paper thin sheet of roots hidden under a blanket of moss on a solid rock slab, but some could have big thick roots wrapped between and around a pile of half ton boulders. Tricky one to judge.

That's all they are, a pretty slick 800euro guide plate, but with a pulley built in. Awesome bit of kit, huge improvement on the Pretzl IDs they replace. Still got a heap of IDs for general use, but for the centrepiece of the masterpoint... Clutches rule, hard.

Figures be damned, that's a nice meaty pull. No worries dangling two people and a stretcher off a 12" conifer then, I'll make a note of it in our training manual.

And yeah, load cells are great fun, been such a useful tool the few times I've played with one. Definitely an investment worth making if you can make it work for you. Not sure we can afford one this year, fingers crossed for next year!

Those Clutches do all the clicking for us. Such a pleasing noise! I would like to upgrade the pulleys in the future, but it won't be for clicky ones, just the Petzl SpinL1/2, or another brand equivalent. I definitely see the appeal of the one directional ones, but they wouldn't really help us out I don't think. Can't afford clicky pulleys anyway, we are getting another pair of Clutches soon enough...

Provided the 5 lucky chosen trees can each take 16kN of pull, they are stronger than the anchor cord holding them together, and they only need to give 7 or 8kN each to beat the current weak point in the system, the ropes themselves. Maybe we'll track down a load cell and a tractor and try pulling some trees ourselves, it'd be fun to get some numbers on it.

You just need to cover the tree in a giant cloud of insulation.

Pretty scary looking worms, those. To be fair, barriers are an effective pest control technique in organic growing.

Yeah sideways pull at the base. It'd be interesting to consider a downward pull on a limb or the stem from a redirect, aiming to haul a load out of cave or a river gully though. Wrist thickness or more for climbing on (depending, of course, on so many factors), so two wrists for a rescue load, times it by ten for a safety margin... twenty wrist thickness? I don't have the arb rigging experience of a lot of people here, so what thickness of wood is the minimum for dropping a 250kg chunk from up in the tree? Probably want to let that run for a bit I guess... Back to the ground anchor, I'd say a 6" minimum stem is a decent diameter to aim for and I'm sure it'd perform just fine on its own, personally I'd want three of them tied together though.

Shame it was vertical on the tree and not a horizontal load, but still wildly interesting. Love a bit of destruction testing. From a technical rope rescue point of view, that tree would probably exceed the 25kN target for a system... but you'd still want a second one nearby, just in case. Good old redundancy.

If it's possible to see a picture of the tree, that'd be smashing. It wouldn't help your case, but everyone loves seeing a nice tree.

Generally having a bit more of an idea and inclination towards what is best for the human race as a whole, instead of a handful of the unnecessarily-wealthy few. Edit: Sorry, I was talking about the general situation, not just this tree. Tricky to judge without seeing pictures of the tree and the plan to be, but oak trees are fairly important to keep if at all possible. Shame to replace all of them with double concrete drives.

Some people need telling, as made clear by... [gestures vaguely towards the entirety of the world]

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Volvo XC90 at 2700kg, or 27kN, assuming a static load. What's the smallest tree you'd lower one from?

Bit of a difference, to be honest.

Maybe someone here can put some numbers on this, even if it's just anecdotally. In terms of kN, how much sideways pull, from a theoretically-indestructible sling or chain around the base, can a tree take before it keels over? A wrist-thickness hazel, your average sycamore, a 5ft oak? Has anyone done rigorous destruction testing on this, are there any studies available? Has anyone here yanked an escaped leylandii out the ground with a tractor? Has anyone ever lifted a Toyota Corolla out of a stream using a 27-to-1 haul system on a great big beech tree? Obviously soil depth and quality plays a huge part, maybe even things like recent weather conditions, soil humidity, prevailing wind direction, direction of pull... I'm setting up a rope rescue demonstration for a national meeting of mountain rescue personnel, including a bit on anchor selection and redundancy, using trees, rock gear, and hedgehog ground spikes, and how your 22kn sling doesn't mean much if it's wrapped around something that breaks at half a kN. The rock gear we use is rated for anything between 3 and 30kN, and it'll often be the damp and brittle rock that fails here in Ireland before the cam or nut, and the hedgehog ground spikes we use are only as good as the soil they're hammered into. Same with the trees, you can probably tie twenty tiny little saplings together and get a workable anchor, as long as they are well equalised... So I'm just looking for any kind of experience or opinions on what kind of force the trees you'd tie up to make a decent anchor can take before they fail. I think it's safe to assume that a single great big oak tree in good soil would comfortably exceed the 25kN target for a rope rescue system, but thanks to redundancy concerns you'd still want to tie at least two together, just to be safe... Anyone want to pluck some numbers out of their orifice, or describe some of the weights you've hung off of trees before? Cheers dudes.

I second Bocca's thoughts up there. There's ads on here all the time for jobs around the world, usually offering help with visas, accommodation, the works. 21 is a great age to get out and see the planet, you're old enough for people to think about taking you seriously, but still young enough to get away with all sorts of things. Your hometown will still be there in 3, 5, 10 years time... and you'll have a whole pile of stories to tell. It's not for everybody, some people prefer to put their roots down quickly, but I shudder to think of the things I'd have missed out on if I didn't go walkabout when I was younger.

I have to say... there seems to be a growing consensus that it does happen. I've never had a parachute fail on me. Doesn't mean it doesn't happen.

I was ringing up a load of logs for a guy after bringing them down, he had a timbercroc. Worked great on longer skinny bits, was less worth it the heavier the sticks got. The multiple teeth thing is a good idea, works as intended. I don't know if I'd personally fork out for one though, especially if the logs are already in a decent pile and can be cut in situ.

Colour me shocked!

Oh right, I remember. Probably either Antifa or Greenpeace arsonists, generally.

I forget in what context you brought up volcanoes and forest fires, so this isn't necessarily directed at you, I just remember seeing someone mention them a few pages back. m2-res_640p.mp4 Which emits more carbon dioxide: volcanoes or human activities? | NOAA Climate.gov WWW.CLIMATE.GOV Human activities emit 60 or more times the amount of carbon dioxide released by volcanoes each year. Regarding volcanoes, they are abdrop in the bucket compared to human output. Regarding forest fires, despite them being an essential regenerative process for various ecosystems all over the planet, they are of course getting bigger, more destructive, and more widespread as a result of climate change - hotter temperatures, longer droughts, etc. - and hitting areas that have not evolved to accommodate them; on top of the inevitable release of CO2, of which I'm not sure how the "natural" forest fires stack up against the "unnatural" ones, plus the regular human emissions. That'd be some interesting data to find.