Overnight Rigging

Thursday, April 23, 2009

Hoffman Challenge Course, Dryden, NY

            Mark, Devin, Lillian, Dana and I packed up gear and hammocks and went to the challenge course to set up for Friday’s class and overnight.  Saturday’s class planned to do alternate ascension methods in class, so we found them a tree with low hanging branches to try out the motion lanyard, then rigged two other trees with p-chord for the yo-yo method and prusiking.  We also left one without a false crotch so they could demo that in class.

            For my class, we had decided to do rig your own tree day, where the students would try to pick, shoot for, rig and climb there own tree.  Obviously, this required no work on our part for pre-rigging, so with everything set for Saturday’s class plan, we hiked down to the platform to set anchor lines and hammocks for the overnight.

            Saturday’s class was much larger than Friday’s, and they needed 4 hammocks in addition to the 6 people that fit on the platform in order to get everyone up there.  Devin, Lillian and I jugged to the platform, and Lillian started placing anchors for the people on the platform while 

Devin jugging up

Devin and I used our motion lanyards to climb up into the canopy and string the hammocks.  I discovered that it can be very annoying how the motion lanyard forces you to face in a specific direction—twisting around to tie hammocks up behind me became awkward and uncomfortable.

            By now, dark had fallen and we discovered that only Devin and I had headlamps, and worse, Devin’s wasn’t working.  It ended up working best for me to leave my headlamp off so that all of our eyes adjusted to the relative darkness.  I actually really like working in the dark—rappelling in the dark always makes me feel very Mission Impossible.  The hike out of the woods in the dark (without a path of any kind) was a little interesting, but I ended up glad for the experience later.