Welcome to Strider Trees.
Today we've got kind of a fun rigging scenario
I want to tell you guys about and Instagram.
The last few videos I've posted have been about these remote anchor setups
that I find I'm using more and more, especially since I've got the GRCS
to apply pretension.
And a scenario like this
where we're dealing with this oak tree that's entirely over this garage,
this is the ticket. It's really cool.
It's going to let me lift these branches up in a way
that's going to help me untangle them from the mess that
because I have to cut some of the top branches, they're going to want to fall
and get tangled, will be able to lift them out with a GRCS.
So that's going to be pretty sweet.
But I've been wanting to show you a breakdown of how I set this up.
In this case, I'm using it in a pine.
It's a little bit different in an oak tree, but it's pretty darn similar.
And so hopefully you guys will find this useful.
All right, check it out.
So here is our kind of all the anchors and that are on this tree.
This is my remote rigging tree.
In this scenario, I'm actually supporting myself.
My climb line is in the same tree as the rigging.
One of the better things about remote anchors
is that a lot of times
don't have to be like, I could have my climb line in the tree
that I'm climbing, but in this case, the structure of the tree is real
flat and arched over,
which makes for a really lousy personal anchor for my own tie and point.
And we're we're anchoring to this big old heavy duty pine.
And so I'm really not worried
about the stress that the rigging is going to put on the pine.
So I feel totally comfortable with my climb line in here.
I've got a little bit of an example and some video of what
that looks like at the top, so we'll show you that later.
But down here, I'll just explain.
We've got the base anchor for our primary rigging point.
So this heavy duty polyester, core polyester cover
rigging line with relatively low stretch and low twist.
This is what is got the pulley going through it, which is supporting this line.
So this is our actual rigging line.
It's another low stretch poly poly rope, but it's poly poly double braid,
but it's a little smaller diameter because this rope is experiencing twice
the load, roughly twice the load of this rope
because of that pulley that we're using to lift with.
So we've got the GRCS This rope is only barely long enough.
I'll probably have
to put a little extension on the side that I'm using
so that we can get everything to the ground.
But this is the GRCS we use.
We'll take some wraps here.
We'll be able to lift with the GRCS
and we're going to use this rigging rope to pull branches up and over and out
of this other tree that's behind us over here and over the top of the garage.
So we get some video of that kind of how this is all positioned relative
our rigging scenario.
But I love the fact that it's over here off to the side behind the what
we're where our work is because I'll be able to make cuts and have all
this material peel away from me where I'm at in the tree,
and we can put as much tension as we want because this is super solid
at at 20% a minimum, breaking strength of our weakest possible link
is going to put us somewhere in the neighborhood of now
1600 pounds of tension, pounds of force.
This is good for 2000 at working load.
So we're pretty well within tolerances for everything we're going to pick
all of our pieces should be probably sub 600 pounds so
we can pull as high as we want and rig everything real safely.
So hopefully you get to see some of that action here.
So we've got this beautiful molded trunk
black oak here in California and we see a lot of these.
They have a tendency to split along those
co dominant unions down the base.
But this one is already going all out every direction.
So I've set up some cabling up above there a couple of years ago
to try and keep it together.
But either way it still ends up reaching out every few years
and we need to trim the tips up and away from these structures.
We got one set, one set of tips that's over the top of this garage.
And earlier on this spring,
when the weight was a little heavier, it was actually almost on the roof.
And then we've got this other set of tips that's even now, while it's a little bit
lighter, is getting close to the roof line of the main house.
So this poses a couple of particular challenges.
Number one, obviously, we don't want to drop
too much stuff on the roof or on the gutters, but number two,
anything I cut from up above and I'm trying to reduce the length of this.
So I need to take some cuts from from branches up towards the top of the canopy.
They're going to want to get snagged and cut
and not want to fall through the rest of the canopy down below.
So I'm going to go up.
We're going to inspect some cables
and we're going to take some tip weight out to try and reduce the overall length
and a little bit of the weight down out at the extremes of the tree and the canopy.
And then we'll break it all to the ground and process it here.
Good morning. I want to show you guys today
what I frequently use as my remote anchor set up.
I got it all right in front of me and hopefully it'll make sense.
There's a lot of ropes going on, but I'll try and explain it real well here.
So this rope here is my climb line.
It's Samson Mercury, not a big fan.
And it stopped all house.
So it's going to be a I'd rather be using my zig-zag, but I left it
in the other toolbox and when I've got it not blocked up here through this
Petzl eject.
And the reason I'm doing that instead of just going up and over myself
with this line, is because I'm trying to avoid some extra snap on this.
This eject will let me pull it off the cat, the bark a little bit and
maybe spare some sap
and maybe not.
But it should make for a retrieval pretty being pretty easy
and it's not blocked because I want to be on single line.
It also allows this.
It keeps this lower leg out from being at risk
of something happening down below me, something happens down below me,
or one of these rigging lines rubs through and burns this side of the rope.
I will still be secure through the eject so it makes me a little bit safer
and it saves my my bro from a little bit of sap up top here.
But anyway, that's my climb line.
And then right here, obviously this is my flip line
and then this line here is about a £16,000
static rigging rope and I've got it wrapped
two thirds of the way around the tree and then back down.
And it's going to be base anchored to the bottom of the tree.
This is going to be my primary remote rigging points.
So I've got that pulley on there, just a bowline with a Yosemite finish,
and then I've got my rigging line through this.
I use a really static kind of low stretch polyester, poly core rigging line
because we're going to be lifting with the GRCS and it just works better.
It's a lot less running of the GRCS, a lot less running on my drill down below.
If I use a more static lifting line.
So the cool thing about this setup
is that when I'm all done, it all is retrievable from the ground, the eject.
I'll be able to tie a little
retrieval ball onto this and it'll pull through and release that.
And then this.
I can use the GRCS pulling down on my rigging line
and if I untie the base anchor from this rope,
I'll be able to pull that whole rope to the ground using this pulley
so long as my ropes are run nice and straight in parallel each other.
If there's a branch in between, then there'll be a problem.
But even if there is a branch, I can just not block it.
Kind of like I'm doing here.
Pull one end of the rope all the way up and through,
and then pull the rest of it down.
So it's all retrievable from the ground.
And it's going to allow me to use this this arborist block
as a canopy anchor for the oak down there that you can't really see.
That's all over the top of the roof of a garage right here and a house over here.
So I'll show you that when we get lower.
I hope that all makes sense.
Here we go.
So there is my my top tie tree where
everything's coming from, all the rigging in my climb line.
And because it's way up there, I can get way out on these skinny
little branches and cut nice tips like I did right here.
Just a little small, two inch cut.
And I take a couple more up there
and I took another little guy right here.
And that's
how we're going to reduce this thing a little bit, trying to keep it from
keep it from overgrowing in this garage
too much more down there.
Okay, guys.
Caleb with the branches,
this form.
And so I'm way over the top of this roof right now.
And I spotted from the ground this hanger,
and you can kind of see it right there.
There's where it's broken off.
That's about a six inch diameter branch.
And it's just hanging up
in this oak. Right.
Just barely suspending the tips over the garage.
So this is going to be a trick to rig down and it has to be rigged.
Otherwise, you know that it will land on the roof for sure.
So what I've done here is I've I've climbed all the way out
to this branch and I'm going to rig that branch on a sling.
I'm going to have it on one end of my rigging line and then I'm going to climb.
I'm also going to tie on the main
tip that I'm trying to remove just for the tip reduction.
And I'm going to rig them down together and run my rigging line through a redirect
just a little bit below me here on this branch
so that it can all come out together
and hopefully won't get caught up in the tips below me,
because that's a huge pain when that happens.
So I've got my little redirect below me there and then I've got that
double leg, a little extender piece on and one of my cranes things that I made.
So it's got two legs.
I'm going to tie one of those legs on of our branch that's suspended.
I'm going to tie the other leg
probably on either right here or maybe just past that break
so that I can cut it all at once and have it all peel out of the tip.
And then I'm going to have a guy position down there on the roof to to land it.
All right.
Now, you got it all there, Caleb I. Yes,
yes, please.
I'm up
all the
way up.
All right.
So I'm like that now.
I hope that I can land that off.
And then.
All right, so hopefully you found that useful.
This tree.
We didn't end up actually using the grass.
Yes, because I was able to string bigger clumps of branches together
so that it added some weight and was able to just push them out
because I got so far out on the tips.
So the grass. Yes.
Was there. If we needed it, if I needed to pull something out,
I wouldn't have to muscle it.
But as it turns out, we didn't have to use it.
But as it is, it was all really smooth.
Now we're going to go ahead and use the GRCS to retrieve all the material
and all of the canopy anchors and such, particularly the big blue heavy rope.
That's our main support.
We use the GRCS on our rigging line to pull that all out
all the way to the ground from the ground.
So hopefully everything should retrieve.
I got my fingers
crossed about the pencil eject because as anyone who has used retrievable
canopy anchors before knows, it's always a little bit
questionable, especially with this darn Samson Mercury Rope.
It's kind of slippery.
And so when I put my retrieval ball on there,
I'll have to not it real good because it's going to want to just slide off.
If I'm not careful but anyway as the cleanup
ready so this here
is my backup basal anchor on my climb line and I'm just pulling it out right now.
I got it untied from the tree and then when I pull on this,
I should be able to pull three the knot that's in the back
and that little throw ball that's over on the climb side
should release the pencil eject up top there.
So we're trying to make that happen.
It worked.
So the third Walcott in there released the eject.
This came out
and I didn't have to pull my rope through a sappy union the whole way.
And so that's kind of the point of this is it keeps me from having to sat my rope
the whole time. It's up there
now. The other part that we get to retrieve is this year. Yes.
So remember, we've got our rigging line up and through there,
I'm going to do the same thing.
I'm going to put a retrieval object on the end of my rigging line,
pull it all the way up to the pulley, and then we'll put it on the gas
to pull the pulley down to the GRCS And that'll allow our base
anchor for the rigging to come up and out all in one go, and we'll be done.
First, we got to lower any remaining limbs
that got left on the climb or the rigging line.
Looks like we've got four on there now.
Some retrieving my rigging point now and I tie the knot on here
and that'll probably block into the pulley and that should be enough.
But just in case I threw a figure eight because this can't do
pull through the pulley and I really don't want this rope to pull out because
then I got to climb all the way back up and I already pulled out my climb line.
So should have paid more attention to that. Anyway,
Caleb, were
you on tied the base anchor on our rigging and I'm going to go ahead
and pull it out from here using our rigging lines.
So pull this all the way through
and right.
Sounds like that's up there.
Now, I could pull on this real hard, like.
Like so or because I've got this here,
you could just
use our technology.
Now, that looks easy,
but there is a almost a full wrap around the tree up at the top there.
So there's a lot of friction keeping this from coming down.
If I hadn't had the GRCS yes, that would have been arduous, to say the least.
So you can kind of see how that jammed in there.
In this case, the knot did slip through.
And so it's only because I put the Figure eight on there
that it managed to grab.
I can come out, this can come out
and all the readings out of the tree,
no more climbing to be done.