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The Dangers of Short Static Falls

How long is this thing anywY?

It blows my mind how it is promoted as "shorter" without publishing a length spec.

agree, I guess there is no legal liability to keeping the length a secret :)

Will report back with dimensions when I get it, probably early next week....
 
1800lbs in a 5pt harness. We are hunting in saddles. There is a big difference between the two. We need to be careful putting numbers like this out there without being very specific. Someone could read your post, and think they’re ok falling 3-4 feet in a saddle, and then making a life changing mistake.

This statement was meant as a warning. Don't fall into static rope - you may exceed the capability of your body to handle the Arresting Force even if your equipment CAN handle the Arresting forces.

The Arresting Force as measured on a load cell would be the same, full body harness or not, with no shock absorber in the system.

The benefits of a full body harness are that it keeps your body oriented upright should you fall - and it MAY dissipate force more evenly across your body.

At work I run Petzl ASAP Lock and ASAP' Sorber on rope as my secondary, primary is sometimes hands/feet, Work Positioner or Petzl ID.

Petzl makes great products, but I don't think they are just right for saddle hunting. I have tried to use them for hunting, but too much metal and flashy colors- I'm trying to learn more arborists/rope technologies for saddle hunting.
 
Yates Shorty Screamer arrived. It's almost 7" end to end and 2.04 oz. I just took it out of the package and haven't loaded it yet, so it may stretch a little more. But at this length its in the same range as the 20cm Petzl Sorber. Using a typical caribiner to include it in the system its a net add of roughly 10".
In general it looks really good, definitely clean and compact, should pack easily with the rest of my kit.

As you can see in the provided paperwork snaps the Shorty model is intended for Fall Factor .25 - 1.0. and is supposed to activate at > 2Kn.

My intended use is on my tether attached to a secondary bridge on my linesman loops to backup my SRT/RAD climbing system. In this application depending on whether I tend the tether after each pull on the ascender or not I should never have more than 6"-12" of slack on roughly 30" of tether.

Maybe some of the propeller heads on here can sanity check me on this, but I'm calculating my rope segment of the FF formula as the length of tether where it exits the girth hitch eye at the trunk, plus the friction hitch length to the caribiner that attaches to the Shorty from its place on the tether. In reality there is probably some shock absorption from the length of tether constricting around the trunk, plus some stretch or creep of the friction hitch on the tether as it comes tight, but I think its safer to assume those are zero.

So using my estimates a fall factor with 6" of slack is .2, 12" = .4, 15" = .5 and so on.

In any event, as long as I'm advancing my tether to head height or above as I ascend I'm never falling from above my girth hitch attachment point, which keeps me below a FF of 1. Well within the Shorty's effective range.

Unless something comes up I'm going to try to hunt this afternoon and will give this thing a try and report back, hopefully with a hero shot too. :)
 

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My Cassin X-Draw arrived today too. Its 1.8 ozs, 1.25"x .875" x 7.5" long. I'll try to give it a hang and see how it works and then I'll report back.

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I had a short static fall just yesterday. I had a dang dead tree right in the wrong spot. I grabbed hold and gave it my best yank when it released its hold on the ground and drove me to a 3 foot static fall flat on my back. A little sore this morning.... should have tether'd in just not exactly sure what i would have anchored to.
 
I had a short static fall just yesterday. I had a dang dead tree right in the wrong spot. I grabbed hold and gave it my best yank when it released its hold on the ground and drove me to a 3 foot static fall flat on my back. A little sore this morning.... should have tether'd in just not exactly sure what i would have anchored to.
I'm sure someone will argue that was only a .822921 kN fall! Did one similar a few weeks ago and looked around for any laughing squirrels!
 
I'm sure someone will argue that was only a .822921 kN fall! Did one similar a few weeks ago and looked around for any laughing squirrels!

The ground stop me cold - static fall lol - I'm pretty sore today
 
I'm sure someone will argue that was only a .822921 kN fall! Did one similar a few weeks ago and looked around for any laughing squirrels!

lol, I think its generally accepted that a FF 1.0 is still a very serious fall. So .822 is in the game
 
I had a short static fall just yesterday. I had a dang dead tree right in the wrong spot. I grabbed hold and gave it my best yank when it released its hold on the ground and drove me to a 3 foot static fall flat on my back. A little sore this morning.... should have tether'd in just not exactly sure what i would have anchored to.
Glad you're ok. I busted my tail Sunday coming down a mountain. Feet came right out from underneath me on a sandstone slope.
 
I had a short static fall just yesterday. I had a dang dead tree right in the wrong spot. I grabbed hold and gave it my best yank when it released its hold on the ground and drove me to a 3 foot static fall flat on my back. A little sore this morning.... should have tether'd in just not exactly sure what i would have anchored to.

I had something like this in August. I had walked about a mile over mud left by one of the many high water events this year and had probably an inch of it stuck to the treads of my boots. I put my weight on one of my CF bolts to climb the 3 steps up and pull the card out of a camera and the muddy boot slid right off the end of the bolt. Luckily, the nice soft mud softened my fall... and luckily I had a change of clothes back on the truck.
 
I was kind of joking in my response - but i sure am stiff and sore - those blunderous falls even at ground level are getting harder to deal with due to the aging process - the things I wasted in youth :)
Glad you're ok Dave. I can relate to the age thing. I took a little tumble on a slippery log on a downslope in the dark with my pack on the other day. Took me longer than I'd liike to admit to figure out how to right myself and continue on my way. Luckily it was only my pride that got bruised in that encounter with the ground.
 
I was the worst with this stuff, didn't really start using any kind of harness with regularity until about 5 years ago. Always been athletic and foolishly thinking I was bullet proof and invisible all these years. Even survived a quick ride down a pine tree with a first generation Baker Climbing stand back in the late 70's. These days I can't be too cautious, especially with what saddle hunting has done to open my eyes to the potential risks and the kinds of forces involved in a fall as we've discussed on this thread.

Anyway, the risk of injury or death is real fella's.


Apparently slipped and hit head on bottom ladder rung, doa. Sad, very sad.
 
Shale has cost me more than a few bruised backsides :) going up is harder on the lungs, coming down is harder on the knees and arse - just saying :)

I was steelhead fishing an Ohio tributary and - before I used studs in my boots - had both feet kick out on the shale... I had a hand towel rolled up in a small pack, resting along my lower back. As I fell back I landed flat on that and it felt so close to breaking my back across that towel, such a freak thing. Felt lucky walking away unharmed, just sore.
 
Shale has cost me more than a few bruised backsides :) going up is harder on the lungs, coming down is harder on the knees and arse - just saying :)

I was steelhead fishing an Ohio tributary and - before I used studs in my boots - had both feet kick out on the shale... I had a hand towel rolled up in a small pack, resting along my lower back. As I fell back I landed flat on that and it felt so close to breaking my back across that towel, such a freak thing. Felt lucky walking away unharmed, just sore.
 
I was the worst with this stuff, didn't really start using any kind of harness with regularity until about 5 years ago. Always been athletic and foolishly thinking I was bullet proof and invisible all these years. Even survived a quick ride down a pine tree with a first generation Baker Climbing stand back in the late 70's. These days I can't be too cautious, especially with what saddle hunting has done to open my eyes to the potential risks and the kinds of forces involved in a fall as we've discussed on this thread.

Anyway, the risk of injury or death is real fella's.


Apparently slipped and hit head on bottom ladder rung, doa. Sad, very sad.
I hope this was a relative of Brian Landry?
 
no idea, but you're not the first to ask the same question. I also didn't read all the way through the article when I posted that link. Looks like he may have stumbled while on the ground and hit his head on the lower ladder rung and died from the impact.

Regardless, there's plenty of opportunity to slip or fall just so and get hurt or killed doing what we do, far more so at elevation.
 
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