It comes to mind that in some situations I've even used a hitch below my descender points as a footloop to unweight my descenders.
Not trying to bust on ya for getting out of a sticky situation though, glad you made it safely.
For more on pruning palms without using spikes, see this thread:
How do you spikeless climb big palms?
Some systems for palm pruning without spikes are SRT and 2:1, putting a line up over the top of the frond to gain primary ascent.