Tips n Tricks foreword:
Climbing presents many difficulties that sometimes we take as being normal and that we just have to struggle on as there is no other option but the hard way!
Well this isn't in my opinion true, i've been climbing for a relativly short period of time, yet have found with a bit of ingenuity it is possible to make hard work easy, this comes from using the latest tools and techniques availible to us to make our climbing lives easier.
In my time climbing I have met climbers who have had relativly short climbing careers this I thought was down to poor technique or just plain hard work burning out the climber early in his career, yet there are some climbers who have stuck to there old ways and have managed long careers as climbing arborist, I feel this down to individual body types/biomechanics, some of us are just built stronger or have better conditioned bodies to undertake ardous repetative work. Just because some of us are not as well built for arb work does not mean we cannot climb for more than 10 years before retiring due to muscla skeletal disorders (MSD's) or repatative strain injuries (RSI's) with the wealth of equipment and new climbing techniques now availible to us there is no reason why we can't remain productive climbers into our 50's.
In the coming years i hope to make this a site where ideas can be presented, new techniques explained, to be archived here to make an easy to access resource for us all.
Some of the ideas presented here are to provoke thought on the techniques availible to us, some of them may be experimental and use specialist equipment that if configured wrong can lead to serious/fatal injury, i don't want this site to be limited to showing only well known and accepted ideas/techniques, so please be carefull when trying these techniques out I cannot be held liable! You've been warned!!
SRT Rescue
Here is an intresting idea that DrewB from arbtalk posted pics of, its an idea for performing an aerial rescue from the ground if the climber has injured himself whilst on a SRT system. The idea is particularly usefull if the SRT line is not long enough to lower the climber to the ground. The midline knot needs to be tied before the climber ascends, backing up any system is always a good idea and is a good habit to get into, just about ways to improve your safety will make you a safer and more productive climber, often with SRT just a running bowline would secure the opposite end of your line to the tree by doing this you effectivly rule out a ground based rescue, what I generally do is attach a grigri or similar to the base of the tree, but on occasion my SRT line is not long enough, with this idea another line can be attached to the mid-line knot, the SRT line cut and the climber belayed to the ground..
At the moment I only have the pics, hopefully those of you familiar with SRT will grasp the concept of the idea, once myself and my colleagues have had an oppertunity to try this idea out i will give a more detailed description of how to perform this type of rescue.
Anchor Redirect
Here is a good trick for trees with a potentially weak high central anchor point:- The higher your anchor point the better, it makes positioning far easier and safer. This technique works best with an adjustable pulley type cambium saver (a sling with single pulley would also suffice), you will also need a double pulley or 2. Set your cambium saver or sling with pulley on a good strong part of the stem below the high anchor point making sure it will not slip up the stem, you can use another double pulley girth hitched with a sling half way between the highest anchor and the low anchor to help spread the load.