First Ascension Rigging

Fisher Woods, Ithaca, NY

Wednesday, April 8, 2009

            Devin, Dana, Lillian and I headed out to the old growth forest to rig trees for the first day of jugging.  That morning it had actually been snowing, but by the time we set out, it had warmed up (all the way to 40), and was looking nicer.  We walked down in the valley to the trees that we used last semester.  I pulled out the big shot on the first one (the taller one, that I had done my first assent on) and started shooting for it while Devin, Dana and Lillian went down to the other tree.  As it turned out, that one still had p-cord in it, so they started pulling a false crotch while I kept shooting.  Miraculously, it only took my 5 shots before I actually got the crotch I was aiming for.

            I left the zing-it in and went to check on the other tree, wanting to see how they pulled the false crotch.  The pre-made one they used hadn’t been big enough, and when they tried to pull it back down, it got stuck.  (Devin confessed later that he had known that the first false crotch would be too small, and just wanted to give us the experience.  How thoughtful)  After some interesting acrobatics with the cord, they got it back down and we rigged up a larger one from webbing and carabiners to try again.  This time, when we pulled it up, it wouldn’t spin all the way around the branch no matter what we did, and we finally had to resort to pulling a rope (thank goodness for the backup chord) and climbing up to reset it.

            We had only brought one ascension rig (Devin’s, which meant his tree saddle and basic ascenders), and I slipped into it and climbed up while Devin and Lillian went over to the other tree, and Dana went back to the van feeling sick.  When I reached the top, I discovered the rope I was sitting on was pinning the false crotch down.  I had to do some interesting heel-hook/jumping around to unweight the rope and reposition the false crotch.  I also reset the carabiners to make the false crotch redundant with 2 carabiners instead of 4 (which looked a bit excessive).

            We pulled the false crotch in the other tree with very few problems, and packed everything up to head back out.  According to Devin, we made record fast time for Fisher Woods rigging, even though we didn’t get back until 7.  Apparently Fisher Woods is notorious for sucking ridiculous amounts of time.