Hey Climbers!

I have a question about what you're all using as a slack tender.

I think we all fall into one of 4 categories

1) What is a slack tender

2) I use a little pulley like...

Petzl Fixe Puller


3) I just run the tail end of my climbing line through the carabiner and use that

4) I use something else.

Here's the reason I ask. I am always looking for ways to cut excessive weight off my saddle. But I need things to be quick, you know? Quick and secure.

So in an email conversation with fellow treeclimbing.com member Icabod, we came up with an idea of a little slack tender. It's basically a tiny piece of rope, maybe 5 inches long, with an eye on each end. You use this instead of a pulley to advance the friction hitch.

I've tried a few different versions (Cam, I'm sending you one in the mail so you can try....afterall, it's YOUR idea!) spliced out of different types of rope.

For a few months now, I've been thinking of another type of slack tender, but I'll hold off on that right now.

I might be able to post some pictures of this mini slack tender in a few days.

So what do you use? What features would your ideal slack tender have? What is it about your slack tender that you don't like?

love
nick

Hi Nick,

Are you talking about a rigging that automatically advances the blake's when you pull down on the haul (down) rope?

I've only seen pulleys used for this. Please post some pics.

I'll be out of the county for a couple of weeks, but look forward to the pics when I return.

Bob

Well my original idea was that my wife takes up the slack I leave at home, and she is tender hearted...

Of course I'm kidding. The rope works in place of the pulley. It works best with the advanced hitches.

I can post some pics, but I'll wait for the one that Nick is making. He's a "professional" splicer, and mine looks really bad.

It does work really well.

Cam, I am going to send you three of them, each of a different style, but all the same concept. You better post us some pics! They'll go out this weekend.

love
nick

Okay, here's what I'm talking about. It works quite well. This particular one is made out of technora, which is sorta slippery. This is crucial for this to work. Less slipperyness means you have to pull harder to advance the hitch.

Technora Slack Tender <---click on that

love
nick

That thing looks alot better than my
model.
Would have posted sooner but been @ hospital with wife...I'm holding newborn Aidan Patrick (9#4oz., 19") right now!

Nick, you tie that distel with short legs, that has been my problem! I may get away from the house soon, mom wants the other two kids out of her hair for a while. Might try it out again.

Looks good, Icabod

I've been using a small, brass, swivel snap for slack tenders. The ones with a gate that flips in like a biner seem to work better than the ones with the thumb slide.

I clip my biner through the eye of the snap and clip the snap under my hitch.

Many advantages:

Cheap, only about two dollars
Eliminates the pulley which "Tom the Fumbler" has been known to drop
Instead of spending twenty bucks on the pulley I can use the money to buy something else.
Only gives up a tiny bit of effeciency to the pulley.
One less link in the system. This makes it quicker to react.
Brass is very slippery.

Tom

I actually used a brass clip at first. problem was that it was heavy and dropped on the clipped end towards the ground; this caused the line feeding through the clip to not progress by itself. The setup pictured by Nick shows how the rope tender allows free slack to drop freely.

Plus a 3" section of rope weighs only a few grams, and a brass snap weighs several ounces.

Icabod

Is Nick's loop just an eye on eye splice? it looks like it horsehoes around the climbing line under the hitch like any other slack tender.

Since the loop is shorter, does that make slack tending more effecient?

It seems like this is another step towards reducing slack or play in the hitch. Start with tying short bridges, add a short slack tender and the rope would tend smoother. Is that the idea?

If I ever get to the point where I decide on the use of gear solely on grams vrs ounces I'm staying on the ground. This is like mountaineers cutting off tooth brush handles and then drilling them to save weight. There are many other places in my system that I can save ounces which will get me pounds way before grams will gather to become ounces

Tom

Yep, Tom, the one in the pic is about 5" long, with an eye spliced on each end. It serves the same purpose as the brass swivel snap.

I like it because it's quiet.

love
nick

I use twisted clevises for a fairlead on some of my lines. Granted they are a very expensive tool if you have one laying around not being used they work great.
They dont hog up hardly any room on the biner and they stay very close as nick's rope one does so it is very efficient.
If you untie your hitches often it can be cumbersome screwing and unscrewing them onto the line but i usually leave my hitches tied to the line and only untie them for replacement

Dan,
The original idea came to me when I started using the advanced hitches. I realised that to take full advantage of the use of the distel some more gear was in order (i.e. a micro pulley)

I am a little paranoid (from all my years of solo climbing) so I always carry ALL of my gear. My pack weighs about 40#, so thinking about adding more gear made my back hurt. I realised that I had some gear loops that I had spliced from some nylon hollowbraid in the bottom of my sack so I tried it out. It worked so well I decided that I did not need the micropulley or that heavy brass snap. Nick was kind enough to improve on the idea by lending his excellent splicing skills.

Weight only becomes an issue of you carry too much gear. But not enough gear becomes a problem when you are stuck 40' off the ground in the middle of the wilderness. I guess I overcompensate for my past errors.

And, yes, that does beat all.

Cam

I just use a maillon with a schwabish and a single autolockercarabiner.
Along the carabiner the set up DDrT rig from gate inwards is barrelknot-schawish leg 1- leg2- maillon.

I dont like using a non rated dogleash snap, because the pulley/maillon slack tender means you already have a high friction Z-pulley rig already in place.
They are cheap enough, and versatile, and stay in line nicely with a schwabish.