We broke 2 new arborist bridges and 3 old ones from Nick Markley & Hunter Vincent. They all broke super good enough above 23kN which is much stronger than your back. We weren't sure how to pull them but we decided on doing them in a U shape with a barrel knot jammed into quicklinks. If you pulled to crazy forces on your harness, it would squeeze you silly until it was pulling in the U shape or basket position we did in this test. 1st test (new bridge) broke at the knot where it jammed the quicklink at 25.59kN 2nd test (new bridge) broke at the knot where it jammed the quicklink at 25.85kN 3rd test (old bridge) broke at the knot where it jammed the quicklink at 22.89kN 4th test (old bridge) broke at the knot where it jammed the quicklink at 23.27kN 5th test (old bridge) broke at the carabiner at the load cell!!! at 26.23kN We broke some 1/2" rope, new and old in this other episode Behind the Scenes I originally sought after cores shot ropes and an arborist said he had some, sent me "well used ropes" and then sat in the queue for almost a year. I broke them to get them off the to do list and I was surprised such a large diameter rope broke so low. Then I did the VT Prusik VIDEO and Cory said he had some new rope of the exact same type so I thought comparing new vs old would make for a super good enough video as I explore HOW i want to make arborist videos. After Publishing Thoughts I feel insecure about making videos on a discipline I know nothing about but then the comments show me how many questions arborists have about their gear that takes an over zealous independent break tester to answer. I think really understanding the gaps and trying to fill them is the magic sauce. Also, it was interesting how many people brought up how tying figure 8s wasn't a standard thing in these ropes. I assume that is true, even before tying them, but it was nice to compare them to all my other rope tests which are tied with figure 8s. Splicing is a deep topic and I hope to do entire break test series on that, and of course testing all sorts of knots. It is nice to see how engaged the arborist community is.

How do cams fail in a dynamic fall rather than a slow pull tester? We hung our new cam crusher device from the drop tower and tested a few and found out the results are all over the place.
Many of these cams came from Timothy Niedmeyer - Thank you. They all broke above MBS and higher than the force you will put on them if you take a whipper. It is nice to see HOW they break, not just the breaking force. 10% supports us They sell cams! Behind the Scenes Break test the cams on the drop tower. How hard can that be? We had an amazing adjustable cam crusher crack built by Steve Glotfelty, we had a drop tower and we had some used cams. Well hanging the cam crusher underneath the support bar (that someday might be removed and wasn't part of original design, that's a different story) made us lose a lot of height. We also found out if you attach a rope, even a static rope, that it stretches enough to absorb enough force to not break the cams with 2x 75lb weights lashed together. To free drop more weight requires a different approach. We have to figure out how to keep the weight together, the impact on the ground could damage the drain below and moving the weights around becomes problematic. Its challenging to operate the drop tower with just two people so we have to add complexity slowly. Our next tests will be mounting the drop tower but as you'll see, that lead us to another problem. After Posting Thoughts Super short and direct to the point edit like this did not get the views and engagement I thought it would. I don't want these videos to be unnecessarily long but youtube likes the 8min mark apparently and suggests it to more people when I do that. Check out our Totem Cams tests

I almost bought a Ronin Lift Power Ascender for a climbing project and I would have ended up using the wrong rope which not only sucks to damage the Ronin and also your rope BUT if it shreds the rope and you are on a single rope system, then you die. Don't die because you didn't read the instructions! Mark Hanna obviously repairs them but also is an authorized retailer and you can buy them from his WEBSITE. This episode is not sponsored and I have no affiliate link with the Ronin. I was asked many times to make a video about them and Mark had good stories about what not to do. Behind the Scene Bobby Hutton and I were doing our Sprat Level 1 as seen in this VIDEO and Mark, with all of his toys, had the Ronin. He seemed to know a lot about it and people asked about it and sometimes I just put a little mental note in my brain when you request tests and then when I see an opportunity I pounce. This was such a great episode because there is no reason to break test it, other people basically already did and to be able to see the guts I think really helps people understand what they are trusting their life too. After Posting Thoughts Overall really positive feedback and wow, what a deep rabbit hole industrial tools are. I bet I could start an entire 2nd channel posting 2x a week just doing what I do on rope access stuff. Maybe someday!

Here is a teaser trailer of our adventures in Iceland where we highlined, rope jumped, ice climbed. Our 7 episodes coming out about this trip will be about the rope jump rig, how we rigged a highline and got the photo you see in the thumbnail, ice screw break tests, v thread break tests, and a 3 part ice climbing course by certified glacier guides. Very likely to be released in November 2022. You can do (most of) what you saw in this video by the guys from this video: https://icepicjourneys.is/ https://www.stepman.is/ Stephen's guest house (bed & breakfast) in Hofn is http://www.dynjandi.com/en Our team https://www.instagram.com/andrea.nicole.photography/ https://www.instagram.com/betweencontinents/ https://www.instagram.com/icepicjourneys/ https://www.instagram.com/whyistheiceblue/ https://www.instagram.com/acdcrokkarinn/ https://www.instagram.com/asgeirmar/ https://www.instagram.com/stepman/ https://www.instagram.com/prin.skia Behind the Scenes In 2017 I went to Iceland and established 5 new highlines in a week all over the country and you can see those videos if you click the ICELAND filter option on our content page. It is a beautiful country and has some of the easiest access to glaciers anywhere in the world. Mike Reed invited me out to do some glacier rope jumping so I went back in 2022. We had to go in the spring in between the snow filling the moulins (holes created by melting glacier rivers) and the melting of the glacier having too much water flowing in them. This video shows the windy conditions we met trying to rig a short highline to attach our rope jump. Everything takes longer than expected but we did get to rig a rope jump. A rope swing would have made us hit the sides too much but falling is still falling. We also got a chance to learn ice climbing so we tried to set up a triple action photo where we highlined, ice climbed and fire spun in an entrance to an ice cave that had two holes in the ceiling. While we were there, we filmed a 3 part video series to introduce people to ice climbing since we were with very qualified ice guides. We also figured out how to generate 30kN with just pulleys and no tools so we could test ice screws and v threads in real ice. That too was more work than we bargained for but we did it and we were stoked. This video was just the teaser to the group of videos we will make out of this trip. After Posting Thoughts Overwhelming stoked comments! A 3 minute video takes waaaaay longer to edit than a 20 minute if it's timed to music and made to look like a movie trailer. It's really nice to tease and let people know what's coming in this fashion rather than a blah monday update video, but I've also had a bunch of people quite disappointed I'm sitting on ice break test numbers and am not releasing them. It takes time to put together something legible and with enough context one could understand how we even tested it. This is the first time I'm being intentional about posting seasonally relevant content in the season in which it is relevant! Mind blowing! I know! But that has to happen way in advance with my work flow.

Topless Dome is a 396 feet tall with a water fall coming down the center of it. This is the 3rd video about the project where we test the original anchor that we found; used by the first ascensionist in 1978. The webbing was weaker at 12.91kN and 14.41kN as new webbing which would be 20kN in the way I tested them. When I pulled the anchor itself, it broke at 9.01kN which is LESS than 50% of what it should be. The pulley was ironically stronger at 9.94kN. And the quick link was 47.24kN. The other two quick links from other TAG cave systems broke at 26.25kN and the other one that looked really corroded I could not break after destroying my stuff at 89kN or 20,000LBF. We also test a few other quick links found in nearby caves. See the other two videos about the project The first episode's blog has a photo collage of amazing photos from the project! Tumbling Rock Cave is SCCI protected and permits are required to enter the cave Project leader: Rachel Saker https://www.instagram.com/petzlprincess Photo Credit: Ethan Reuter https://www.instagram.com/ethan_reuter_photography Behind the Scenes I originally broke a 50 year old cave rope as a slackline channel July 2020 which really was my introduction to caving. I eventually meet Rachel through publishing that and she told me about this Topless project. In the two trips, I was out there I could see first hand what corroded gear looked like. She sent me some of it after cleaning up the gear so I could break it. It didn't flow with the 2nd video and combining all 3 would be way too long so this video became a stand alone episode. It was really fun to break something I helped re-discover and I actually understood the history of it. It was also really interesting to see how nylon degrades when NOT exposed to UV light and how strong rusty steel quick links can be. After Posting Thoughts Now that I risked posting an hour long mini FILM about our world record highline in Sweden and it turned out to be a wildly successful episode relative to slackline content, I think posting this series as a 40 minute long single video could have worked well. There is always a debate whether having 3 videos point to each other helps or just going 100% full value is better. But over 250,000 views in 3 months on a cave video is amazing. The problem is, it is only on the 2nd video with the best thumbnail and the other videos only have about 30,000 views. Like I always am testing gear, I'm always testing distribution methods. Chopping stuff up fails the test here.