All right, welcome to Strider tree gear.
I'm doing little filming today for my new class: beginning climbing.
It's going to cover everything
you need to know for either moving rope system or stationary
rope system, climbing everything from the basic gear, a little bit
more fancy gear.
If you're trying to go into the actual professional side of climbing,
all the way to rope setting, how to move about in the canopy.
It's going to be roughly an hour long.
Give you a lot of information, A to Z start to finish and hopefully
you guys will find that useful.
It's going to be
Well, both on my website and on skillshare.
So keep your eye out for that.
And if you want to be alerted when that comes out, be sure to
subscribe to my website, stridertreegear.com or
StriderTrees.com I've got a little submission form and I'll send out a big
email to everyone on that on that list when that is available.
But I wanted to today, give you a little sample of the information
that is going to be contained in that and hopefully, you'll find it
useful.
Okay, so when you're looking to set your rope ahead of you, your top
tie, your climb system.
There's a few things that you want to focus on on picking out where to
actually set the rope in the tree and the canopy so that you can move
optimally.
So that you're not having too much trouble, getting your way in there
because that initial entry is oftentimes the most difficult part of
the whole process.
So, starting off with the moving rope system here.
I've got a similarly structured tree here for our picture so I can
kind of compare and contrast but the
Beauty of a moving losing rope system is that it's really easy to
advance your line ahead of you
once you're actually in the canopy.
Once you're standing up here in one of these unions, you can throw
your line up
one branch two branches ahead of you and work your way, all the way up
to the top.
Set your friction saver, or whatever you're going to use, and then you
can climb down and around in the tree with relatively little
difficulty.
And you can leave your tie in point in place.
But getting up there is the hard part. With a moving rope system,
remember, you've got two legs of line and you want
minimal friction in the system.
So the shot that he's going to try to make with his throw line.
You want to shoot
not for the lowest Branch.
If you shoot for the lowest branch, it's hard to get past it.
You want to shoot for the next decent branch.
That's above a branch that you can stand on, but it's still strong
enough for you to work.
So you want to throw that line up
and over there, bring it around.
And now if I just let that drop
it's going to be behind this other limb, right?
And you don't
And then when you bring that rope around, if you were to bring it all
the way back around,
it's going to trap two limbs in there.
And again you want to be standing on this one when you switch your
ropes around.
So that's going to make it tough to actually pull yourself up on top
of that.
If your rope is coming out from the bottom side.
So ideally what you want to do, is called isolating the branch, you
want your throw line to go up and over this and come around it to
where it's just that one branch that's trapped within your climb
system.
So that's the goal.
You can't always get that, but that's what you're shooting for.
There's different ways to manipulate your throw line, using the ball
to swing back and forth and have it swing on the inside.
So, you know, say you trap them both.
Well, you can get the ball swinging, the throw weight and you can land
it on this side.
And I'll demonstrate that a little bit in a minute.
But what it comes down to is you want to isolate a branch somewhere in
the lower part of the canopy where you can get both legs of line to
you with nothing trapped in the middle.
And that's going to be your easiest way to enter.
Once you are actually in the tree, standing on this, like I said, you can advance
your throw line
You can advance your climb line above you, you tie your
lanyard lock yourself off.
Take off your climb line.
Throw it up to a higher branch and away you go.
Until you're up top set and climb it work your way down.
That's how you would approach your shot or your throw with a moving
rope system.
Now, I'm going to explain that single rope system here and it's a
little bit different.
So with a stationary rope system or single rope system.
It's more difficult.
And what I'm going to describe here is a base anchored.
So there's two different ways to do a single rope system.
You can have your canopy, you can have a canopy anchor, which means
your rope is is actually tied off around the canopy coming down and
and that's, you know, you just climb up and down on that
one. It's anchored in the canopy.
It's called a canopy anchor or you
have your line thrown up and over and then tie it around the base of
the tree and you can climb the other end of it and that's called a
base anchor.
So what I'm going to demonstrate today is the base anchor, it's a
little bit more simple.
It's easy to retrieve.
There's a lot of complexity that comes with canopy anchors and you
still have to isolate the branch
If you use a canopy anchor, and you think, why would anyone ever
use a canopy anchor?
Well, there's a key advantage of using a canopy anchor over a base
anchor, and that is
When I'm base anchored, I'm more than doubling the force of my
weight on this union because if this leg of the rope is pulling
downwards equal to my weight, let's just say a hundred and fifty pounds
and then the other leg of the rope is pulling downwards because I'm
tied to it at a hundred fifty pounds right here.
That branch is experiencing at least 300 pounds of pressure.
And if I bounce or jump, it can actually multiply that 2-3 times
And so what can
Happen with a base
Anchor is if you're up and over too small of a limb too small of a
branch at the top, you can actually break the top out of the tree.
So you want to be a little bit careful with your base anchors to make
sure that you're nice and close to the trunk.
And you've got a good
meaty branch around.
I recommend not climbing on anything smaller than the diameter of your
thigh.
So that should give you some idea of what a branch is going to be,
that's going to be sturdy enough to be based anchored.
But this is the easier simpler way to go.
This is the one I'm going to recommend and what we will be
demonstrating through this video system.
So like I was saying, as far as our actual throwing goes, there's ways
that the technique and what you're going to aim for, with a single
rope shot is a little bit different than the double rope because with
the base anchor, I don't actually have to isolate the branch and I
don't necessarily even want to.
A lot of times the base anchor, my primary goal is getting it as high in
the tree as I can, and still being on sturdy enough branches.
Because once my base is anchored of and tied, it's hard to advance
ahead of me.
I've got one in tight around the tree.
The other end is this end I'm climbing on and there's a whole bunch of
slack down there.
So what ends up happening, if I want to advance it is I either have to
pull all the slack through.
Our got to have someone else on the ground, untie it and then I can
advance it or I have to use what's called a redirect which is a little
bit easier and that can be done to but it's more complexity more gear
and
You have to retrieve it on your way down and all that complicates
things.
So ideally, when you're throwing for a single rope anchor, you want to
shoot it
You want to shoot it or throw it up over the highest fork in the tree
that you can.
Just say this goes up that way, you know, and in a perfect world,
you hit the top most strong.
Anchor on the first try, you let the rope come back down.
You know, right now it's behind the tree and and there's the
tailing end right there
coming out from the back side.
And now you don't have to isolate anything.
All you got to do is you take this, take this end that's hanging out
over here.
Bring it around the back side.
Tie it off around the base
of the tree and and away you go.
So, I mean, just trying to show that the rope goes up and over down
the backside of the tree, where you can't see it, and it just anchored
around the base.
There's a few different ways to Anchor that.
I'll show you two through this demo, but there's a lot of ways to skin
that cat and I'll give you a couple.
So, little bit of a different approach to setting a line, whether you
choose stationary rope system or moving rope system.
And hopefully that will help make some sense for you as you go to do
that.
So to start off, I'm going to actually take the end of my rope here
pass it around the tree.
And I'll start with the most simple cheap easy to deal with method.
It involves two knots that you'll have to know.
The first one is a running bowline.
So I wrap it around.
It'll Loop there.
If you want a closer
example of how this is done
you can check out the reference sheet.
The running Bowen is one of the knots that will be listed there.
Now, that by itself, is not considered a safe climbing knot because if
you slack and tension, slack, intention that this can actually work
itself loose.
So you have to back it up. The way we back it up is by using it by
tying a fisherman stopper around
the other line, around the length of the line going
around the tree.
so,
Dress that up properly.
See how it's got the little cross right there when two parallel
strands going around and so all that does it slides along here
And that's going to keep the anchor here from
sliding up and down the tree.
It's also going to back up the tail
so that that tail can't come loose.
Now, that would be basic
anchor number one.
No extra hardware.
Nothing needed, but just knowledge about how to tie these
two knots.
Go ahead and take this apart and I will show you another method that
can be used.
For those of you who maybe come from rock climbing.
This method will be a little bit more familiar to you.
It uses just one knot, it's a safe climbing knot.
You don't really need to back it up because it doesn't come loose.
So you start out with a figure eight.
It's just going to be a choking figure eight, what they
call that figure eight follow through.
So, just like you would be if you're going to attach
yourself to a rock climbing harness.
Tie a little figure 8 knot in the rope.
Bring It around the end of the tree going up, the working end there,
and I'm going to follow back with my tail.
I'm going to follow back, run the strands parallel to that current
Figure 8.
That is there.
And it should lay flat and parallel.
The whole way around then, you know, you've done it right
I want to make sure all those strands are running next to each other.
You should see 2, 4, 6, 8 all, nice and smooth and parallel.
And that one's bunched over a little bit there.
And you want to tighten all these individually so that you can, it
actually counter-intuitively makes it so that it comes out
easier.
And that will also be a nice safe base anchor to climb on. Once
again, no Hardware, very simple, little slower, a little harder to
tie, but no big deal.
So hopefully you found that helpful.
If you ever had trouble figuring out just where to set the rope in the
tree. When you're, when you're throwing your throw line up there. Those
are rules that I've lived by and they've served me
well. If you want more sort of basic information like that or a much
more in-depth explanation of the whole process of getting to a tree,
be sure to check out this class when it comes out.
It's going to be available on skillshare and on my website.
And hopefully, I will catch you guys next time here on the YouTube
channel.
Let me know if
Anything in particular you want to know or learn about in the
comments.
I'm happy to oblige.
Most of these videos have come from your guys's suggestions, and I
really appreciate the support.
So thank you and I'll catch you next time.