All of us SRT climbers like to have canopy anchors.
And if you're doing spar removals, if you're moving around in the canopy,
very often the fastest, quickest way to get on the tree
is with a choked canopy anchor using the eye of your rope eye splice.
And there's a lot of ways to do that.
I'm going to run through a couple a little bit of the pros and cons,
and I want to tell you guys why I personally don't like the Notch quickie
for this application. A lot of folks love it.
It is technically safe, but I don't like it and I'll tell you why.
So when I'm doing Crane work, for example, I’ll belay off the crane, after
I've anchored the top of the branches and I will usually choke off an anchor,
especially if I'm in something tall
because I like to use a short rope when I'm doing crane work.
But I still need to be able to get to the ground.
So I've got my SRT device, maybe I've got an 80 foot rope and I'm 65 feet up.
I'll do a really quick choking anchor so that I can blow out.
I've got my redundancy. I'm safe.
There's a bunch of ways to do it.
Obviously, the first and kind of the most common is a knot.
Now, a lot of folks don't like to climb on bowlines
and they're right, not to do so.
But if you take a running bowline
and back it up with either Yosemite finish
or this other finish, I'll just do a Yosemite for you guys
because that's what you're more familiar with then This is perfectly safe
and quick.
I limit.
I cut my potential like my total maximum load
down by 50% or so by tying the knot.
But that's still way more than enough to catch me.
I've got very little play in the system.
Anything that's going to cause this to break is going to break me, too.
So it's good enough, Super good enough.
It can't slip.
You know, that's not going to come undone.
And typically, I'm not leaving this tied for that long anyway.
And the big risk of just a in by itself, if you didn't know and I'll show you
the reason we don't tie bowling by itself is if you slack and tighten
it over and over again,
you can see that whole knot starts to come loose
and actually this tail will just walk itself through eventually.
I'll show you here in a little different configuration, but with a backup.
Totally safe, totally solid.
It's just a little bit slow and it leaves a little bit of tangles hanging.
So maybe you could get snagged.
It's good, but it's not maybe ideal.
The next thing a lot of folks will use is a carabiner.
Now, this is fast.
I'm using the eye.
I've got my carabiner on there.
It's choked.
I can do that really quickly. Very reliably.
The beauty of the carabiner is it has an auto locking gate.
So I'm not afraid of accidentally not locking it.
The big concern here is that technically I'm loading this gate.
I'm loading the spine of the carabiner against the tree,
which is generally not recommended by the manufacturer
because carabiners are super strong
loaded end to end like this, but loaded bent over the top of something like this
that weakens the total maximum load.
I happen to know from testing and observation that on big diameter spars
the sideloading involved in this carabiner weakens
it so little that actually the splice is going to be the weak point.
So in a situation like this, the splice is going to break
long before the carabiner.
So I'm actually totally comfortable using this in many situations.
At the one time I wouldn't use, I said something like this
is if I'm on a very narrow diameter spar and I'll show you what that looks like
here in just a second.
The other key thing to be aware of with this type of choking anchor is
if you accidentally clip it the wrong direction and now I'm loading
the gate against the trunk, and that is a little bit more hazardous
because as you're moving this around, you could conceive ably
move your anchor in such a way that you unlock it.
And some of you saw that there.
But I'm actually unlocked now.
And now that's going to be much weaker.
And I did that without actually manipulating the gate
with my fingers just by moving my anchor around.
It's not very likely it can happen.
It's also weaker.
So cross loading against
the gate is going to be weaker than cross loading against the spine.
So you really want to be careful about how you orient that gate out,
facing away spine against the tree, Use it on big trunks.
It's going to be as solid or more solid than the ice splice.
Typically.
Let me show you this quick here.
So if this was a Live oak branch,
this would be thick enough for me to actually trust my life on it.
Assuming the union's below it, we're all solid.
But you got to know your species
so you wouldn't do that on just about everything.
So if you can see here in this kind
of loading the branch, my rope is choking the carabiner
in such a way that the the tree branch
is applying pressure right here in the middle of the spine,
such that when I load it heavily, I'm basically bending.
I'm making a bending moment
on the spine in the weak direction.
So this is a configuration that will cause of the failure
of the Caribbean or at much, much lower loads than it's rated for.
So this would be a dangerous configuration.
That would be a super dangerous configuration.
That's not something you would want to do.
Sure, that would itself is weak ish.
But those of you who know, you know, even even a relatively small, what, two,
three inch diameter branch of oak can hold a lot of weight
and you might actually break the carabiner first.
So you wouldn't you wouldn't want to choke like this.
This is where we get into the quickie.
So let's talk about the quickie a little bit.
The quickie is designed to be loaded in a number of directions.
So if I put the quickie on my line here
and I pass that around the tree,
my little small branch, and I get it closed.
This is actually
it's still side loading it, but because the
you have very little leverage, these portions of the device are short.
You don't have much leverage there. Steel, they're solid.
This is considered safe.
So this should still the quickie itself should hold just as much load like this
as you would, you know, pulling it in line like this.
So for all intents and purposes, purposes, this would be an acceptable
use of the quickie.
And that's why a lot of people like it, because they say you can cross
load it safely.
So there's a little bit of a difference there between those two.
There's two configurations,
another choking anchor that I like to use because it's quick.
You'll just use a ring.
I've got this one here because this is the one I've got on me.
But you all you need is the ring.
And if you pass
for a rope around the tree, you put the ring on first.
But the rope around the tree
and then you put your eye
through the rope or through the ring from the inside out
and then block it with a carabiner.
This creates a very nice cinching anchor.
What I like about this, even over the Caribbean here,
is that the friction created by cinching it down tends to keep it in place.
You can see that it's not loosening up as I go up and down a little bit like this.
And I'm
all the rope interaction is rope on metal, which is going to preserve
a higher percentage of the strength of the rope.
And I'm not cross loading the carabiner.
I'm just not blocking it into the ring.
There's a lot of debate about whether or not this is safe.
It is a fairly routine and normal way to use
a ring in the mountain climbing industry.
So it's just something I feel very comfortable with.
Even though it's not explicitly stated in the manufacturers recommendations,
and you'll have to check those yourself depending on which ring
and which carabiners you're using,
but it's something I feel very safe using personally.
Now the other nice thing about this is obviously it's really quick and easy
to undo and I'm not likely to drop this ring
because it stays on on my rope between myself and my device.
The last anchor I want to talk about here, it's called the Texas Tug,
and it is another choking method that uses some hardware.
I've got a little Pinto pulley here.
I like the redundancy of the Pinto because
even if like this shave on the pulley were to fail, it still got this.
BECKETT So you've got a relatively solid block of aluminum here
with a very short against short leverage.
So you can have
it choked on something pretty small and you're not really cross loading the pulley.
So this ends up being super solid.
Again, the weak link is probably the ice place,
even on relatively small tops,
but this isn't an explicitly recommended
configuration from the manufacturer, so
never do it.
But this is something I feel safe doing.
And the nice advantage of having the pulley here
is if I were to take the tail of my rope,
pass it through this carabiner,
this carbon is actually a little bit small for this.
If I were to belay out and bring the tail with me
by integrating the pulley into this system,
I can retrieve this with a relatively little friction.
And so even if I'm around like a big old spa
where I've got branches and it's going to be a big pain
to retrieve this, this pulley makes that much nicer.
That retrieval process is just smoother, but it's a little more gear,
so more expensive.
And again, it's not explicitly recommended from the manufacturer to do just that.
Last, but certainly not least, let's talk about the quickie.
So the quickie solves a lot of the problems
of these other devices we've talked about in that you can use it
choked against the spar and it is explicitly in the manufacturer's
written recommendations to actually use it in this configuration.
And and so it's you can do it.
It also is
you're not going to cross load it
because of the mentioned reasons I mentioned before a little short,
what do you call it?
Short levers, solid steel, really robust construction.
It's going to be relatively safe.
I don't like it.
And here's why.
When I go to actually put this on, you had to be super careful
about getting that pin all the way through
so that both of these little spring loaded catches get to the other side.
And you also have to make sure that the the tail end that's sticking out is up
so that when you load this, I'm not pushing it against the trunk of the tree.
So when I first set that up, I did it upside
down and I had to take it apart and rearrange it.
If it's like this, then you're actually applying pressure
against those tiny little pins when you load it and that's not safe.
And the other thing is this particular pin,
it doesn't snap itself into place like a Caribbean air, right?
When I've got a carabiner
and I open it,
it automatically closes and locks.
It's a requirement.
Self-Locking self-closing
or self-closing self locking carabiners are requirement by ANSI.
And so I don't have to think about it after I after I hear that click with this,
it could click.
I could have it mostly in there.
And then if I'm not paying really close attention,
if I don't get it all the way through, it can wiggle itself free.
And just like in the thumbnail picture, a couple of times I was climbing on this,
I looked down at my system and realize I'm hanging on a system that's half undone
because I had neglectful if not shoved it through all the way.
And that happened to me twice.
And I'm generally fairly attentive because I'm pretty scared of heights.
So if it can happen to me, it can happen to anyone.
So the fact that it's not self-closing self auto locking
makes me hesitant to use it, even though
the construction of it is safer or safer, it is more robust.
It doesn't care if it's choked, it's going to be really solid.
It might actually support more weight than a tote carabiner.
Just the fact that the Caribbean or will self close off out of lock.
I feel safer with that, even if I know I'm going to compromise the strength
of the Caribbean or ever so slightly with that particular configuration.
So hopefully that makes sense to you guys there.
But that's why I don't like the quickie myself.
As always.
Practice low and slow, get instruction from a professional.
Don't just take my word for it. Follow the rules.
You keep yourself safe.
You are responsible for your own safety,
but hopefully you found this valuable and that makes sense to you guys.
Climb safe out there and I'll see you next time.