Make your own positioning lanyard, 1 hand adjustable

R.Boreal

Just thought I'd share this one with you all - I've been using this for about 3 years now, works great. Some close up shots so you can see the particulars. It pays to be a gear slut. I saw these things in the Sherrill catalogue, (with expensive positioner gadgets, of course) and an hour later I had my homegrown one made of XTC Fire. A few weeks later I did made another one out of Safety Blue. It's got a different pulley, but works just as well. Maybe better. I hardly ever use the white one, it's a backup.

Total length from snap to 'biner is about 16 ft. I climb with a lot of 12 strand ropes like Arbor-Plex, SafetyPro, XTC 12, but my lanyard's got to be smooth, 16 strand. It's gotta come back down thru the crotch, right? Steel rope snap is great for throwing and for helping it back down.

The 'biner is a DMM single locking, which I love. Safe enough, but I don't have to be mucking about with a 3-way move every time I go for the gate. Sure, sometimes it doesn't matter. But if I'm in a tight spot, I may only have a couple a fingers to reach and open it.

I really like the jacketed technora, it holds fast 100% of the time, and releases easily 98% of the time. The tenex tends to be hard to break if you put a lot of pressure on it.

The main thing, of course, is the Schwabisch w/pulley that allows one handed tending. I can climb with it, ascending from my hip dees, by kind of rotating my body to the left while I hold the right side with both hands, left above the knot, pulling, and right hand taking up the slack and advancing the hitch below the pulley. Good too with a multi-hole rigging plate on my center floating D, or forget the plate, just use a separate HMS carabiner on your center strap with one of those wide glide UHMWPE rollers. Of course you can't climb very fast, cause you have almost no distance to advance. But you can get damn close to your tie-in point. (The one pic also shows the fixed eye Kong biners I use for my friction hitch setup.)

I also recently made one of those adjustable friction saver prusiks. I'll post that in a different one. Great for blocking down when you don't want to rely on gaffs alone.

I LOOOOOVE the Sherrill catalog, it's the bomb. So many great ideas there.

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Jason Axe

looks like a good idea ill have to give it a try thanks for posting!

jim1nz

Wow thats a great idea!!! Never seen that before thanks so much...

TreeCo

Here's my Budget 18ft. lanyard. A $4. swivel made for a dog lease, a double locking biner, an aluminum locking snap, 30 inches of 5/16 cord from Sailnet tied in a Distel and 16ft. of New England Saftey Blue High Vee. Scaffold hitches attach the tres cord to the biner and the saftey blue to the snap. A double overhand forms the stopper knot at the end of the lanyard. How's that for a low cost high performance one hand adjustable lanyard? LOL! The dog swivel works great.

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serialtreekiller

Looks good i bet it's it works well nice one

Garry Brockley

Serialtreekiller take note of the knot used you might want to try that on your climbing line instead of the micktress which is a bit like the validian tress only not tied right

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R.Boreal

Seems like there's a few ways to do this. That looks good. One thing I found out a few months ago, reading the Sherrill catalog - some of the expensive positioning lanyards they sell do not release under tension! I never owned a mechanical rope grab thingy. But after using this homegrown lanyard for years, I can tell you, being able to 1)Cinch it up with only one hand, ascending those last few feet, and 2) let it out with only one hand, while hanging on it, makes it the sweet deal it is. If I ended up buying a $200 piece and later found out I couldn't let it out until I first took the tension off it - well, that would be a huge inconvenience. That's why I use the pulleys. I need the lanyard to be self-tending so I can work the tail with one hand while my other hand is, I dunno, pulling myself up on a branch, or pulling the rope down into the friction hitch from above the knot. Climbing when it's attached to my side dees is something I do often. Only for short distances, but it helps to get myself into position to re-crotch with my main line. Funny you got the doggy snap to function like a pulley!

Also, using a rigging plate with the lanyard as a secondary point of attachment on my center floating ring is also a staple move.

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sir_nick2

I used to use this setup when I first started with just a short prussic loop tied in a normal 4 wrap prussic with about 3 meters of 16 strand safety blue, but as my gear collection grew I picked up a grigri on the cheap and have been using that ever since, you can adjust it one handed, don't need to take tension off it to tighten or loosen it and if shit ever hits the fan and a barrel splits and pins me or something like that it has the handle on it for extra leverage to release it. Also you don't need to pull the lanyard through and extra foot to compensate for prussic slack.

mitch__1

Hey guys.. Just curious to know what you would use this lanyard for. Is it for when you are blocking down??

Eric Frei

Blocking down, climbing up ... doesn't matter.

Just remember, 2 attachment points when cutting UNLESS it's safer to only have one.

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mitch__1

Thanks for that, i have got the idea now.. just used for an extra back up..
I always have just climbed with a prussick loop connected to my lifeline with a flip line.. What is the micro pulleys used for in the photos... Is there any good video links or articles on learning different setups??
Thanks

Eric Frei

By pulling on the tail of the rope the micro pulley advances the prussic.

Search the forum as there's tons of info on this type of stuff, check out the video section too and search it .... I've done some videos way back ... before 1080HD was around, there's others too.

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TrevMcRev

Positioning Lanyard is just another variation of a flipline.

You're probably used to a wirecore one with a mechanical adjuster, this is just a rope one with a friction cord adjuster.

Rockin'Robin

I use a 2-in-1 Positioning lanyard, this seems pretty similar, but it would be nice to have a little extra length in it. I know it is possible to make an endless loop variant of this system, it'd be pretty cool to see that set-up.

Iustinian

I've used similar setups in the past, but I really liked how easy and reliable my old gibbs ascender was, with the Magic (red and black) flipline. I've been thinking about getting the ART w/ a swivel. Anyone tried those yet? I do, however, have something very similar to those pics, a 30 ft piece of Blaze with a snap spliced onto one end, the prussic cord with a VT for the adjustor, with the tail coiled into the wingman (or ditty) bag. Having a longer line like that makes it really easy to drop down onto a branch, and many times will eliminate the need for a redirect. Its faster, and I don't have to go back up for the re-direct. The ditty bag keeps the rest of it out of my way.

treelover54

i use a 9 foot static rope with a double fisherman one one side and a doublefisherman loop on the other side with a william petzl caribiner tied to a swabish prusik with a scrw link on the caribiner to tend the not