Have you heard of "rope walking"?
Reviving this thread because I'm needing to do similar AGAIN.
I read this thread shortly after I joined TBN in 2009. That year I had a "young" maple that was about 19" DBH, maybe 40' high, on my suburban property line that my friendly neighbor was concerned was going to fall on her house. We had a quote of about $750 to take it down. I climbed about 20 feet up in it above the reach of my 24' ladder, tied myself off with some 1/2" nylon rope and used my Stihl 021 and a bowsaw to get the upper branches down safely. The rest of the tree was a piece of cake
Now I've got about a dozen trees on three properties that need about the same treatment. They have limbs that need cutting off to prevent property damage before cutting and pulling them down. Unfortunately most of them are about an hour from any working arborist, thus I could expect significant "truck time costs". I've plenty of experience and equipment to get trees to lay down and did not look forward to spending $100/hr for jobs I could do. So I started to do it again. And quickly figured "There's got to be a better way to get up in a tree safely". So I started looking into climbing harnesses so I could at least tie myself safely to the trees.
Well now they have "rope walking".
and
especially this one
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It's a little investment above just the basic rope and harness that I was thinking of, but it looks well worth the cost of a new single bottom plow.
Please,don't try to do any tree work off of a ladder, if you have some experience and can climb the tree with hooks or know how to use ropes to pull yourself into the tree that would be the way to go, if not hire someone reputable to do the job. Working for the power company I can't tell you how many people I have seen hurt through the years trying to do tree work off of ladders, it's just not worth the chance of hurting or dis-abling yourself. Hope this info help's.
Tree work off ladders less than 6' high can be done fairly safely, if no engines or motors are involved
However once you get high enough so the fall will really hurt you need ropes or a bucket truck to tie you in.
The top 15' should be a fairly light stick. On the last few I've used an electric chainsaw on the upper parts. I would worry about using a ladder, one slipped and dropped me years ago. When we were in Australia the electricians had a ladder with a chain strung about a foot from the top and hung on polls and trees nicely. You're talking about a tree thats taller then I would like to go up on a ladder.
And that's another key piece to the safety puzzle. My 021 would usually start on the first pull after being warmed up. But it still required a pull. I may have posted before about my B&D 40V, 12" chainsaw but to me it's ideal for cutting when I'm 20 or 30 feet up. And it was only $120 w/ battery.
So my question is: Are there any rope walkers on TBN with pointers to the better equipment and techniques? There's a wide variety of small metal devices for ascenders and descenders and they all look overpriced, probably to fund insurance overhead for people who push it to the limits.