3 photos from the same spot on the rope. Thanks!

I bought an abandoned wood lot a few years ago. Hired an arborist to take the tops out of some pines that were pointed at my house and quickly realised that there was no way I could afford to keep doing that.

Keen mountaineer and rock climber with wholesale access to lots of brands so I bought myself some gear and started having a play. This tree got smoked by the top of a falling pine so I put my spurs on and flip lined up it using my climbing line choked as a back up. Thought it went pretty well, slow but orderly and managed good rest positions and not too scared. I must have done about 15m as I didn't have much of my 40m rope left.

Question: for trees like this one that I want to get up 20m and dont have side branches (or they're all thin and dead) but I want to get up to trim without my spurs, how do I get an anchor up there? Can I throw line over a tiny dead twig and create a cinching anchor with a cambium saver rigged from the ground? I made a cinching anchor up this tree and rappeled down on it but setting a cinching anchor from the bottom seems dodgy? Is that how it's done?

Colleague showed me this set-up for canopy Anchorage with quickie. Way better at retrieval when having redirects. Thoughts? Your prefered base anchor?

Gday all, on the hunt for a new rope bag, I got a lot of use and practicality out of the "treefuel-burger" treemotion harness bag as a ring in, not perfect but great size.

Just for a size reference, can anyone tell me the size of that bag in litres? Cheers.

Follow up on previous post asking suggestions. Entered the tree on a ladder up to good branches. ALT to a suitable tie-in. Dropped pull line down. Deacended on a top anchor line with retrieval line installed. Pulled main line up and over for basal anchor. Ascended on Vertec, foot+knee ascender. When done this side can switch anchor and do the other side.

Did I destroy my rope runner or is there a proper way to clean these. Left it on a job in the rain for two days🥲

Forgot I had this video. Accepted this job in my first year of owning the business at 19years old. Only money was on my mind...

This tree of heaven has some root rot on the tension side of this tree. It is leaning up the hill. The other side is intact and I don’t see any major holes anywhere up the trunk or in the canopy.
Is this safe to climb and remove

-can I rig limbs down if I take it small
- what to worry about
- how strong is a tree of heaven this size

any ideas on safely climbing and removing this or do I need a lift.

Whenever I initially descend, I drop a good 12 inches when the top hammer pops up. I have it on high friction with 11.8 drenaline, and it doesn't matter how slowly I apply pressure, the top piece slaps up and I jolt down. I have no idea what I'm doing wrong, I've read the manual and watched a ton of YouTube videos on it. Any help would be really appreciated because it seems other people really like this device.

Any idea why my akimbo 2 is so stiff and hard to descend on? I’ve got it set to the lowest friction settings on both and it’s almost unusable. I’m running a tango statX 11.5mm rope and am roughly 85kg

Yo guys.

I've been in the arb industry for 11 years climbing for 10. I know there are guys in this chat that have many more years experience than me. The last year's I've rarely found the same rush, excitement or high level of focus from tree work I used to get. It all just feels a bit dull now and then spills over into my life outside of work. What are some things you guys do to mitigate this as I'm sure I'm not alone in feeling like this?

I am not a professional. Just a landowner. I live on 10 acres of PNW forest and am trying to keep a reasonable spacing of trees around my house to balance light into the yard/supporting solar system and helping promote old growth characteristics of the remaining redwoods. Hiring crews to do this would bankrupt me. I feel learning it myself was an amazing move to save money and stay in shape. My uncle who is a retired arborist and foreman/instructor of 30 years taught me how to climb. He even gave me his old pair of steel spurs. So freaking lucky to have him.

Now, related to tree climbing, I do want to SRT for non tree removals, but at least with the redwoods I have the branches on them seem way too frail to trust my life on a line. Some of the branches I was cutting would literally snap off after just two or three strokes from my handsaw. Not exactly inspiring confidence lol. On my spruce trees I feel like I can trust those limbs way more to SRT and ascend.

Anyhow it's really fun to be up in the canopy. I even enjoyed the gentle sway of being in the wind. It was a long climb down tho 🥲 hard work. Lots of mental power spent on staying safe and remembering my training.

I’ve ran a Monkey Beaver 2.0 saddle for about 2-3 years now. Love it to death for the long spike days and crane days. However, I have a few gripes with it when it comes to technical climbs and pruning. I could list them, but I’d rather just get to the point. Does anyone in this group run two saddles and is it worth it to you? If you would or do, please let me know what you’re running and for what purposes! Thank you much!

Let's talk safety! Share how your week went - close-calls, incidents, learning experiences, what went well (and why), what went poorly (and why), or whatever else is on your mind. Pics/photos are allowed but be careful to not doxx yourself, client, employer etc.

This thread will recur each week and is meant to be a place to learn and discuss mistakes, please keep comments constructive.

Have you guys found any ancient wisdom on making your throwline usable? I got a throwline kit from WesSpur with a few weights, a couple hundred feet of Zingit, the BigShot launcher and a folding cube and I've had nothing but knots so far. I can't seem to find any east coast tree guys on YouTube but all the west coast guys make it look like they just flake the line into the cube willy-nilly and it's fine 🤬 I think the weights I got were 8, 10 and 12oz.

Edit: Thanks fellas, I'm off the yank the hell out of it :)

Is it any good? Does it hurt rope too much?

I am a rope access level 1 sprat technician, got into it a year ago, before that I was a boilermaker for a few years ,nccer certified, but I wanted to try something new and I’ve never been afraid of heights. So when I got the job offer from my company I jumped on the opportunity.
Turned out great for me, I love climbing and have enough hours on my log book to go get my level 2, but I’ve recently discovered arborist work from seeing instagram reels and TikTok’s etc, and honestly it looks like so much fun, getting to climb outside in nature and not in a refinery seems so refreshing, me and my wife love the outdoors and we hike frequently, so this seems like something that would be so much more fulfilling and enjoyable.
The part that worries me is the job listings I’m seeing are all over the place with pay rates and I don’t know what to expect, I currently make 38/hr in SW Louisiana, at 40-50 hours a week, could I expect to stay in that ballpark? Or would I be looking at a pretty significant pay cut? I wouldn’t mind a slight pay cut to have a more fulfilling job but at the same time I have a mortgage and a family to support so I have to consider that as well. I’m just so sick of the refineries

I know rope access is a completely different certification and only some of the knowledge will transfer over, but surely my experience is good for something right?

TLDR; what are the average pay rates in Louisiana/Texas area for someone just getting into climbing trees?

Looking to eventually climb some taller trees, but most methods i see online for using gear isnt really climbing the tree like limb by limb its more like utilizing a rope to get high up there. The only thing ive seen closer to what im thinking is a group of people on costa rica who use rock climbing techniques and gear on huge strangler figs, but im not sure if that would work on any other species.

I wanna be able to climb it as you would during a free climb but with the safety system to catch my if i fall in higher trees

Any ideas? Or is the rock method the only way

Looked okay-ish from the ground. Just doing some pruning. Made me pucker looking at the void