kunsangsean
New Member
- Joined
- Sep 29, 2020
- Messages
- 11
Hey everyone,
I did my first SRT ascent yesterday afternoon - and while I did get up and down the tree safely I ran into a number of issues. I did some searches but didn't find what I'm looking for. I'm climbing with a hand ascender, foot loop and grigri.
1st issue: Girth hitching the trunk. Many of the trees where I'm hunting have dinky 1-2 inch branches which I am not interested in hanging my life on. I watched several videos that made girth hitching the trunk look super easy, yet I failed for hours on multiple trees. On cottonwoods with smooth bark - I got hung up on lower branches where the loop was girth hitch could not ascend when I pulled the tag through the hitch. On larger trees with no lower branches, the rope got caught on the bark and would not reach the height of the crotch I had thrown over. How do guys make that look so easy? Any tips? I see one option is to get a telescoping pole but that looks like a pain / extra expense. I ended up climbing on a 2-3 inch diameter maple limb crotch.
2nd issue: Trusting your gear. I've climbed a lot of trees by hand and spent many hours in tree stands with no problems. But hanging from a branch, dangling 1-2 feet away from a tree with no lower branches kind of scared the **** out of me. I know saddle hunting is safer than tree standing hunting in theory, but how do you get your brain to trust your life to the grigri and rope with no physical sense of security below? This issue was exacerbated by the fact that I found at height my ring of steps strap was not long enough to go around the tree and so the only weight relief I could get was standing on my hand ascender's foot loop.I was super excited to have access to more trees and be able to position more fluidly and precisely, but that wasn't quite what I found to happen on this first climb.
I feel like fixing issue 1 could do quite a bit to give me more peace of mind as well as get me closer to the tree trunk on the climb. But there still is the gear trusting.
Any advice welcome, thanks - Sean
I did my first SRT ascent yesterday afternoon - and while I did get up and down the tree safely I ran into a number of issues. I did some searches but didn't find what I'm looking for. I'm climbing with a hand ascender, foot loop and grigri.
1st issue: Girth hitching the trunk. Many of the trees where I'm hunting have dinky 1-2 inch branches which I am not interested in hanging my life on. I watched several videos that made girth hitching the trunk look super easy, yet I failed for hours on multiple trees. On cottonwoods with smooth bark - I got hung up on lower branches where the loop was girth hitch could not ascend when I pulled the tag through the hitch. On larger trees with no lower branches, the rope got caught on the bark and would not reach the height of the crotch I had thrown over. How do guys make that look so easy? Any tips? I see one option is to get a telescoping pole but that looks like a pain / extra expense. I ended up climbing on a 2-3 inch diameter maple limb crotch.
2nd issue: Trusting your gear. I've climbed a lot of trees by hand and spent many hours in tree stands with no problems. But hanging from a branch, dangling 1-2 feet away from a tree with no lower branches kind of scared the **** out of me. I know saddle hunting is safer than tree standing hunting in theory, but how do you get your brain to trust your life to the grigri and rope with no physical sense of security below? This issue was exacerbated by the fact that I found at height my ring of steps strap was not long enough to go around the tree and so the only weight relief I could get was standing on my hand ascender's foot loop.I was super excited to have access to more trees and be able to position more fluidly and precisely, but that wasn't quite what I found to happen on this first climb.
I feel like fixing issue 1 could do quite a bit to give me more peace of mind as well as get me closer to the tree trunk on the climb. But there still is the gear trusting.
Any advice welcome, thanks - Sean