Well, I’ve been waiting for two years to prune the giant birch tree out in front and today was finally the day. Since it’s tall and doesn’t have many strong horizontal branches, I had to use the harness and carabiner (which is half of the fun right there). Jorge was working on one of the three parts of the birch tree. I went in the greenhouse and belted up my pruner, loppers and saw and put on my harness (feels like putting on a diaper)and got the rope. Climbing the tree was a piece of cake (and fun to look out at that height). Securing the loop around the branch got ever so slightly panicky. My feet were hurting a bit ’cause they were stuck in the crotch of the branch and the main trunk (which kinda hurt) and I couldn’t unclip the carabiner from my harness. Finally I got it off and that was relieving to m’ limbs. (if you know what I mean) Then, one by one, I started knocking off some of the limbs (’cause it has gotten just too tall to manage).
When we took a good amount off of it. I lowered myself down to the ground (with the rope/carabiner hooked on a branch. When I landed on the ground, I disconnected myself from the rope and started cleaning. After that, I saw that I still left my tools up in the tree and the carabiner/rope hooked onto the limb.
Before I continue, I must say one thing. There’s a part of the climbing gear called the Self Locking Device (or something like that). It’s connected to your belt and the rope goes through it so if you slip off the tree (or rock or whatever you are climbing), it will lock the rope so you don’t fall. By pulling a lever, you can lower yourself down. However, when you climb up, you have pull the rope through the SLD to match your level. If you didn’t do that and you fell, you’d fall down to your last level of ascent and then the rope will catch (and give you a nasty whiplash). So that’s why, when you ascend, you want to pull the rope through so if you fall . . . you get the idea.
Anyway, I attached myself back on the rope again I climbed up. Since I was on the bottom and the hook was on the top, I had to climb up. At a certain point, I kinda slipped a bit and I hadn’t yet pulled the rope through the SLD so since I started out on the bottom, I’d have to hit the bottom before the SLD could catch me.
Anyway, I grabbed onto the rope. The rope looked real sleak but my hands could really grip it. I climbed up the rope ’till I got a good branch to hold onto. Then I unhooked the rope/carabiner, threw the tools on the soft pile and climbed down.
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