Treehopper Recon redundant bridge ideas?

[woodsdog2]

The Recon has plates for the bridge and not loops so this wouldn't work for that saddle.

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You're right!

 

[Iron_llama]

The Recon has plates for the bridge and not loops so this wouldn't work for that saddle.

If you attach a short sling to the bridge plate you can clip a carabiner to that. Bonus, no metal-to-metal.

 

[sweats]

If you attach a short sling to the bridge plate you can clip a carabiner to that. Bonus, no metal-to-metal.

I'm not following how that would work exactly given the regular bridge filling up the slots in the plates.

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[Iron_llama]

I'm not following how that would work exactly given the regular bridge filling up the slots in the plates.

I don't have mine with me at the moment so I'm going from memory, but I was picturing girth hitching a sling on there, in the same way as the bungee belt. It might interfere with the bungee belt though.

 

[GeoffJenkins]

Please post the final result. I get the general idea, bit I'm not 100% clear on the details of what you did here.

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Here's where I'm at with this. I replaced the stock webbing bridge with a longer piece. I am using tag-ends as @Allegheny Tom recommended, and I'm tying them off with a simple but clean figure 8 knot. First pic is on my main bridge (climbing, hunting), and the second is putting a carabineer through the tag-ends, tying on a Munter (can use your preferred device/method), and then I could rappel.

I tried putting the tag-ends on the outside with respect to the bridge because I want less clutter inside of my saddle. However, I may try them on the inside because when they are on the outside, the webbing seems to want to shift when either is loaded. It seems quite secure/safe, but I don't know if they would eventually tangle and require "dressing" the overlapping webbing. I'll only know this by practicing more. In either case, this seems to be a viable option for a redundant bridge.

Other than this, I recommend not cutting your new webbing to length until you've practiced your climbing and rappelling method a bunch. I am still trying to figure out mine to avoid having my main bridge and redundant bridge carabineers from hitting, tangling, fighting for space.

 

[sweats]

Looks like an interesting approach. I do have a couple questions though.

Do you think that when you weight the tag ends to rapel it will pull and shorten the main bridge? I recall it not being very difficult to shorten the primary bridge on the Recon by pulling on the tag ends. Granted, everything was unweighted at the time so it may work differently here.

I don't know anything about tying knots in webbing. However, several times on this forum there were warnings about water knots in webbing coming loose over time. Does a figure 8 in webbing perform the same as a figure 8 in rope?

Thanks.

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[GeoffJenkins]

Looks like an interesting approach. I do have a couple questions though.

Do you think that when you weight the tag ends to rapel it will pull and shorten the main bridge? I recall it not being very difficult to shorten the primary bridge on the Recon by pulling on the tag ends. Granted, everything was unweighted at the time so it may work differently here.

I don't know anything about tying knots in webbing. However, several times on this forum there were warnings about water knots in webbing coming loose over time. Does a figure 8 in webbing perform the same as a figure 8 in rope?

Thanks.

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In my experience with the Recon (~40 practice climbs + 15 hunts), I've never noticed the webbing slipping. This is one of the reasons I don't care for the idea of stripping the rubber from the plates, it reduces some of the potential friction used to hold the webbing in place. In case it is relevant, I am ~220 lbs without all of my gear. I'm a fairly strong guy and I've never been able to lengthen/shorten the webbing bridge without backfeeding some of it through the plate(s) first. The fact you have been able to do this (even while unweighted) makes me want to see how you have your webbing routed through the plate(s). Please show me a picture of this if you can.

Also, I'm no specialist on ropes, webbing, knots, etc, but the concept of knots holding typically revolves around surface area - i.e., more surface-on-surface contact equals more friction, which in turn means a stronger hold. My logic tells me there is more surface area to bind with webbing than with any diameter of rope. One way to check for this is to sew a small amount of bright-colored thread (compared to your webbing, e.g. red or yellow thread on black webbing) into the webbing near the not. If it is slipping, even slowly, you should be able to see it by the distance from the bright-colored thread to the knot.

All of this considered, I still need to take the hose to this whole setup, and then climb and rappel in my yard. I learned this lesson when one sticking in early season 2021 when I went to rappel and my autoblock would not engage. Turned out, I just needed a smaller diameter of rope.

 

[dhoff545]

Thanks for all the info on this thread guys. It was just what I was looking for to dial in my recon a bit more.

Mods:
1: Flipped panels.
2: I noticed that the belt attachment was making it hard to adjust the bridge even when standing on a platform so I removed it, removed the plates from the belt and reattached it to the top belt with a double loop of no. 36 bank line through the second MOLLE loop. I guess the stock waist belt and panel orientation made it possible to walk in with a pouch etc and not get that diaper that other saddles address with clips or magents. I don't walk in wearing a saddle so no biggie. If you want to wear this saddle while walking I would not do this.
3: Added extra long tubular webbing bridge reversing the bridge direction from stock, running the tails on the inside finishing them with loops on water knots. This is almost the same as post #25 photo 1. The webbing route is just reversed I think. This gets the same carabiner orientation as shown in the second photo where he is rappelling on a munter. This works great for a munter but will be off for basically all other applications. I may have to just join the ends in a bend of some sort, get a swivel carabiner a delta link. I may send this off to someone like Jerry Grose at CGM and have him sew this all up and then you could run a dual bridge with one continuous sewn webbing loop that would still rotate smoothly through a carabiner. This is important because I might want to use a low tether leaning with the short bridge at some point.

 

[krub6b]

Thanks for all the info on this thread guys. It was just what I was looking for to dial in my recon a bit more.

Mods:
1: Flipped panels.
2: I noticed that the belt attachment was making it hard to adjust the bridge even when standing on a platform so I removed it, removed the plates from the belt and reattached it to the top belt with a double loop of no. 36 bank line through the second MOLLE loop. I guess the stock waist belt and panel orientation made it possible to walk in with a pouch etc and not get that diaper that other saddles address with clips or magents. I don't walk in wearing a saddle so no biggie. If you want to wear this saddle while walking I would not do this.
3: Added extra long tubular webbing bridge reversing the bridge direction from stock, running the tails on the inside finishing them with loops on water knots. This is almost the same as post #25 photo 1. The webbing route is just reversed I think. This gets the same carabiner orientation as shown in the second photo where he is rappelling on a munter. This works great for a munter but will be off for basically all other applications. I may have to just join the ends in a bend of some sort, get a swivel carabiner a delta link. I may send this off to someone like Jerry Grose at CGM and have him sew this all up and then you could run a dual bridge with one continuous sewn webbing loop that would still rotate smoothly through a carabiner. This is important because I might want to use a low tether leaning with the short bridge at some point.

I've been struggling with getting my bungee belt to really hold my sling up the way I wanted it to until I tried attaching it to the molle loops last night after reading your post. I don't know how I haven't seen this before but the bungee belt attached there makes this saddle ride so much better.