He says he has a safeguard... why not just use it. Can the safeguard not be dual purpose and replace the ropeman 1 on a tree tether? And as you repel it will hold you as you pick gear off the tree. Is my thinking wrong?
Are there advantages to the auto block over the safeguard. I am thinking of one stick and repelling next year too.
Another question. How often do you have to climb back up the tree to retrieve a rope that will not come down?
I had 70 plus sits this year and rappelled after each one. I never had to go back up after the rope once. There were a couple of times I came close to having to but I was always able to finagle it loose from the ground.
Every difficult time came when I was routed over a branch. If I didn't pay attention when retrieving the carabiner I used for my girth hitch it could just slightly hang on the back of branch enough to make it difficult to pull straight down. By walking away from the tree with the rope I was able change the angle of pull enough to free it up every time.
In one instance I was routed over a branch , rappelled down in the dark and I forgot to remove my Safeguard from the rope before I tried extracting the rope. When I pulled my pull down string it pulled the tag end of the rope went up as I expected but it hung up when the Safeguard hit the girth hitch. I couldn't figure out was going on in the dark until I dug out my headlamp and shined it up the tree. One of those moments you mutter "dumb@$$" to yourself. Luckily I was still able to jump up and grab the tag end and pull it back down to get the Safeguard off. Then it just pulled down as expected.