Good lanyard?

Hi,

I'm looking for a bit of feedback on what kinds of lanyards are being happily used out there. I have started with the NT Monkey Tail and after looking around through some catalogues it seems that there are certainly better options. Are there?
Then there is the 'make you own lanyard' mess?!

Also, many lanyard descriptions state that they are \"not designed for fall arrest\", so would such lanyards be safe to tie in with for a night in a tree boat?

Thanks a lot,
Nate

I use a 20 foot length of arborist rope with an aluminum snap hook on each end for a lanyard. The snap hooks are easily open/closed with one hand and are just heavy enough to toss (only while protected by a helmet; I got a bad hurt by tugging on a stuck steel snap hook that once released stuck me dead center of my forehead. It hurt even with a helmet on and might have cracked my skull if it would have hit bare skin.)
At my center harness attachment point I use a pear shaped auto-lock carabineer that has a 6 foot length of arborist rope girth hitched at its center.
This forms two three foot ropes to then tie a Blake’s hitch that will work with each end.
With the carabineer attached to my center point I can toss one end over a higher limb and as I advance on one end the other is getting longer. You can remove your primary rope and just use the lanyard to climb.
It is handy to have the lanyard attached to your center point so you will not have harness rotation issues and with up to three tie in points you can traverse limbs with ease.
I use the free end of the lanyard as a third hand to hold stuff or to haul. It can be set to hold a pulley to lift gear.
It can be daisy chained up into a compact coil that you can clip on your harness or rope.

This rig would be as strong as your main climbing system and would be safe for a fall; (there is no falling in treeclimbing) and I would use your NT monkey tail in a treeboat since it is nice and flat.

See you at the top,
Dan

Note: after reading Oldtimers disclaimer I guess I should do one also but not so good with the words so here goes:

Follow my descriptions at your own peril; do something right or wrong and you might kill yourself or someone else. Remember the widows and orphans.

I use a similar set up as Dan House described above. A 20 ft piece of Sportline rope with a Binner tied in each end. The Rope is tied (semi-permanently) to the lower loop in my saddle center loop and conected with a small oval metal screw link to end-to-end splice piece of Tenex rope coiled in a prusik knot that allows the lanyard to be ajusted from both sides. The biners are lower weight than the metal arborist conectors Dan uses and they will not hit you as hard on the head if you pull them from above. This rig is described in the Tree Climbers Companion book and on the Sherrils catalog in the lanyards area. This is a \"homemade\" set up but each component is life safe so I do not hesitate hanging from a branch exclusively with this rig while making relocations to my main climbing rope. It works great to estabilize the climber while doing work, cutting something or installing a treeboat or similar situation when you want to have your hands free. I gave away my NT lanyard because it is not very easy to ajust in the tree and there is not way to coil it out of the way while not in use. Hope this helps you in making your new lanyard.
I will try to post a photo later

NOTE: Advise provided is just for illustration purposes and the user needs to get Training by a certified instructor! Serious bodily harm or bodily injury can happen when the material described above is not used properly

Now, you can see the photo of the lanyard I described on the previous post!
Please, Do not give me any flack for the non-locking Biners!



P.S.Thanks Moss for showing me how to post Flickr photos here, Cool!

Thanks a lot for the advice so far! Things make a lot more sense already.
Looks like the 2-in-1 lanyard is the way to go.

Oh ya, photos really are worth a thousand words! Thanks.

Nate

Good stuff from Treetramp and Oldtimer. Here's how I rig my adjustable lanyard. The hitch is a Knut but any closed hitch will do that works* (*test low first). The rope is 20 ft. of 11mm Blaze. The hitch is made with heat resistant 8mm prusik cord. The pulley allows you to take in slack one handed when you're tightening the lanyard. The hitch can be released safely with one hand to loosen the lanyard.

As mentioned beware of the biner or rope snap when you're pulling the end of the lanyard back though a crotch. The usual cause of getting whacked is the biner jams in the crotch, the climber pulls hard to dislodge, it comes straight at their face with a load of pain.

If there is a possibility that the biner will get hung up in the crotch it's very easy to slide the biner out of the termination knot, pull the knot apart and pull the bare rope end of the lanyard over the branch.It's very quick to re-attach the biner to the end of the lanyard after you take it off. If you have our friend Nick put a tight spliced eye on one end of your lanyard you can take the biner on and off even faster.

I attach my lanyard to the center delta as Treetramp advised. It is very uncomfortable to hang on the side D's. Side D lanyard attachment is typically used when a worker is standing on spikes and chunking down a tree.



More photos

-moss