RADS Climbing Series: Episode 2 - DEMONSTRATION for Arborists & Tree Climbers! 

Knowing that my channel is actually a favorite among some of my viewers is really huge. I take that very seriously as it is very special to have made that much of a connection with some of the people who watch my content. You can expect bigger and better things to come in the future! Up until just recently, I was recovering from a surgery and unable to climb, which is why all of my content was filmed on my kitchen table in my apartment! I'll still being making videos about knots and hitches, however, I'm shifting my focus now towards climbing methods and techniques since I'm finally able to demonstrate them! It's a lot of fun and great exercise as well! Thank you for commenting! Keep it up! =-D

Thanks a lot, I really appreciate it! =-D

If you plan on using a left and a right hand ascender, both with foot loops, to rope walk up a rope, then you would have to TIP; one for each foot. But what about your harness? You would need an ascender/multicender device to connect to your bridge and the device would have to be connected with a chest ascender since both hands would be on a hand ascender. And then imagine what the result would be: three devices all clustered together in close proximity. You would have a hard time moving all of those pieces of gear efficiently. It would be a rope traffic jam. Also, don’t forget that, hanging from both hand ascenders, are foot loops and each is being pulled straight down causing them to become super taught. They would stretch over each other and over your chest device, potentially inhibiting movement of one or more devices completely. I think you should go with the foot ascender and then use a hand ascender to connect to your harness with a tether. If you’re right handed, you need a left foot ascender and a right hand ascender, etc. What kind of system do you climb on the most? I’m just curious. I ordered a chest ascender, some accessory cord and some bungee cord yesterday so that I could make my own knee ascender so that I can actually rope walk with my Rope Runner Pro. I’m pretty stoked. All of the parts cost me only $70 versus the $200+ cost for a retail version. We’ll see how effective it is soon enough. I’m actually probably going to make a video about how to make a knee ascender. Hopefully it works! I’m glad that you appreciate my editing and attempt at humor with the chip eating! I’m slowly trying to learn more about how to edit videos. I’d like to be able to insert music and voice overs. I currently have no clue how to do it, but I’m sure I’ll figure it out. Just being able to edit out all of the useless parts and not having to do everything in one take has taken my episodes to the next level! Oh, by the way, there is a way you can rope walk effectively and quickly using a hand ascender with a foot loop, a chest ascender (which are less expensive than a hand ascender), and a foot ascender. It’s a much less expensive route than a regular rope walking setup, but it works just as well. Only downside is that once you get up to the top, you would need something like a GriGri or a Rig to get down. Also, because you’re using a chest ascender and not a multicender/mechanical prusik, I’m not sure how you would maneuver in the canopy. People who use that setup are mostly cavers and mountaineers and rock climbers since they want to go up and then off their system, not side to side, up and down and all about like in the crown of a tree. So, since you plan to use this arrangement for tree climbing, you probably shouldn’t consider that option. I’m going to leave it here because you’ll at least now have learned that such a system exists and education about systems unrelated to tree climbing are actually very important. I see all climbing styles as being part of one big family and that’s why, in my channel, I try to include methods and techniques for more than just tree climbing. Okay, I’m done rambling now!

Or were you suggesting that you clip into both hand ascenders with a double tether and then have a foot loop on each and you would then walk up the rope? I think people do that. I seem to remember seeing people climb that way on Himalayan mountains like Annapurna and Everest in the Khumbu Ice Fall to get up sheer glacial walls. I've never done it, but it seems like it would force you to lean back a lot and it might be hard to stay straight up, but I could be wrong. If you adjusted the double tether correctly, where one is slightly longer than the other to account for the fact that one is above the other, in theory you could make so your tether is always taught and absent of slack, making for a comfortable ascent. However, that's something you'll have to figure out. Honestly, my friend, I'd just go with the foot ascender and hand ascender with foot loop. You'll be able to make larger strides and although you'll have to keep shifting your weight between your foot and the hand ascender, I'm confident in saying that, with practice, you will move so much faster than the double hand ascender setup. Once you're up in the canopy, how do you plan on moving around? Because all of these setups we're discussing are purely for ascending the rope. They won't be any good to you insofar as moving around in the canopy. Do you have a device that you use?

Once again amazing reply chalked full of great information and advice. I currently am using a monkey beaver 2.0 harness with a Petzl zigzag. Typically I climb to a high point or a best access point for anything below or to the side of me and transition to a moving rope system since it seems to be the least complicated and require not as much forethought picking anchor points. I have picked up a rope wrench and all things (minus foot ascenders) to start trying out SRT technique. I am going to work on it slowly as I really teaching myself and don’t want to get carried away and make a mistake I can’t take back. The two separate hand ascenders and two lanyard idea sounded neat in my head but I will take your advice and definitely be picking up foot ascenders aBy the way I like how you gave a shout out to the rock climbing community. I also do that and ice climbing. climbing things is my passion regardless of what it is. I also like cutting wood, I find it therapeutic. So Naturally I got sucked into the idea combining climbing and cutting trees down for friends and fun.

@@crispbacon696 A Monkey Beaver 2.0 and a ZigZag? Nice, dude! That sounds like an August Hunicke inspired climbing setup; he climbs on exactly that! And sometimes he uses a generic Rope Wrench with it for SRS. I considered getting the ZigZig, but decided I didn’t want to have to get the Chicane for SRS and there are some “safety concerns” when using it with a Rope Wrench (potentially unfounded, but it put a bad taste in my mouth; only one very educated article disputed the concerns and a dozen claiming it is a concern). The Chicane is awful in my opinion; epic fail on Petzl’s part. The device, when added to the ZigZig, results in a system that is so long that many people have reported having trouble doing “hand over hand” above it in a rope walker configuration and it creates a huge side loading concern in the canopy. The plastic which the Chicane is made out of has been known to snap with minimal side loading. So I went with the Rope Runner Pro, which doesn’t safely tolerate any side loading either, however, it has a much slimmer profile so the chances of this happening are minimal; I’ve never had it happen at all. How do you like the MB 2.0? I recently got a TreeMotion because it happened to be deeply discounted on Rope Master. Curious how the MB is in your opinion! As for your comment about teaching yourself, you most definitely want to take something like this slowly. Check everything twice or even thrice before you allow yourself to put your life into its proverbial hands. I, too, am completely self taught. I’ve never had any formal education. However, I do remember having a couple of close calls when I first started climbing. One time, very early on, I recall trying to ascend a rope using regular French prusiks of all things because I was unaware that they had such a tendency to jam. Sure a shit, it jammed during descent (after glazing much of my rope, which was a small rigging rope, not properly rated climbing rope, it the prusik bound tightly around my rope) and I found myself 12 feet above the ground. If this had happened today, I would simply use my emergency sewn prusik loop that I always now carry on my harness and install it below the jammed hitch, allowing me a foothold to take my weight off of the other hitch enough to unjam it and then finish the rappel, unjamming again as needed. I also would never use a French prusik for such a purpose and, if on a single rope as I was back then, I would use a VT using a hitch cord with diameter equal to or slightly smaller than the host rope. Anyways, for all of my stupidity, I was smart enough to always climb with a knife, and I managed to cut myself down and landed in a way where I wasn’t injured. One time I was climbing (and quite high as well) using the aforementioned improper ropes using an SRS setup with a basal anchor. It wasn’t until I got down after finishing the climb that I realized there was a core shot in my rope. I had been hanging several tens of feet high from just the sheath of this questionable rope. That was when I did my due diligence on ropes and bought a proper one. I still have this rope today and it’s the rope I was climbing on in my recent RADS demonstration video. I have had other close calls, but all of them early on when I didn’t know better. Since then, I haven’t had any issues because I am much more educated. If you’re looking to climb SRS, one of the biggest safety tips I can share with you is this: Either being with a canopy anchor (if you can isolate the limb you want) or start with a basal anchor, then climb up to your TIP and convert your system into a canopy anchor (which is easily removed after you get down and untie your basal anchor). This will make your TIP consistently more bomber than if you were to do all of your removal work while staying on the force multiplying basal anchor. Buy a Notch Quickie so that you can easily and safely create canopy anchors. As for my rock climbing shout out, I try to regularly mention techniques and cover gear from as many disciplines of climbing as I can. Just because I strictly climb trees doesn’t mean that there is nothing I can learn from rock, alpine, ice, rescue climbing, etc. And just because most arborists/tree climbers would never even consider purchasing a GriGri, a sport rock climbing device, when there is the option of the Rig, which is an industry climbing device, doesn’t mean that I agree. I have zero rock climbing experience, but it looks hard. Believe it or not, I’m actually scared of heights and I don’t think I’d be able to climb rock faces on lead like that. Maybe top roping, though, where there is minimal threat of taking a whipper. Over the last two weeks, now that I can climb after recovering from my surgery, I’ve had to seriously overcome my fear. Back before this, when I climbed a lot, the fear had lessened dramatically but it ended up coming back during my downtime. It won’t be long before it mostly goes away again! Ice climbing, eh? That’s some intense shit. Waterfall ice or glacier ice?

Super glad to hear your getting better from your surgery. It definitely takes the wind out of your sails. I once was out for awhile from a pretty bad motorcycle accident and I do powerline work. So get back at height was definitely a readjustment. As for the ice climbing I am only doing waterfall ice just cause glacier ice is so far from me. I live in Pennsylvania. Not as hard as people think but the protection can be very sketchy, so the theme is don’t fall and you won’t have to worry lol. The Monkey beaver harness is really a dream to use. Granted the harnes or belt that I use for work on climbing poles are really a old design and compared closely to a old saddle harness. But I can sit in it for hours and have, with no complaints. And as for your tips on the Basil anchor for SRS. I actually toyed around yesterday with that. I started with moving rope to do what I need to then got my adjustable friction saver as a Besil anchor to toy around and see how I like it. I definitely need to get me some foot ascenders but the french prusic and a pulley I set up above my rope wrench was actually sufficient enough to get me off the ground. it was a idea I came up with on the spot and thought of you when I did it. I used my zigzag with a wrote wrench above as usual, the directed the working end from below the zigzag up to a french prusic with a pulley the brought the wrote back down for me to pull my body weight up. After capturing the progress, would shove the prusic and pull up as high as possible and repeat. Not ideal but it worked and thought would like the simplistic idea to not having ascenders