We started out by attaching a long climbing rope to a tree at the top of the hill/ravine thing. We attached it to a length of nylon webbing because Ryan didn't want the rope on the tree.
We started out by attaching a long climbing rope to a tree at the top of the hill/ravine thing. We attached it to a length of nylon webbing because Ryan didn't want the rope on the tree.
Next, we ran the line across to the other side, where we did roughly the same thing to it.
It looked like this. If you look closely, you can see a purple-ish rope.
Then we started to tighten the rope. Climbing rope is stretchy. You wouldn't realize it if you held a short piece of it, but when you have 60 feet played out, the stretch gets noticeable. This is why real zip lines are made of cable; it doesn't stretch. We didn't have any cable, but we figured that if we stretched the rope tightly enough and tied the ends high enough we could compensate for the sag.
Not quite high enough...
We used the traditional tarp backpacker's method of tightening rope. I've heard it called a ratchet, a Z-drag, a trucker's hitch, and who knows how many other names. The basic concept is that you tie a loop in the rope, bring the rope around the tree you're tying it to, pass the end of the rope through the loop you tied, then pull towards the tree. In the picture, Ryan is holding the end of the rope passed through the loop. As he pulls that end, it pulls the loop which acts like a pulley and multiplies his force and pulls the rope tighter.
It's one of those simple things that sounds complicated when you put it into words and actually describe what's happening. The end result is that you can make a few of those loop pulleys, run the rope through all of them and they work together to make your rope very tight. Later on in the day we used a triple system (3 loops) to rip an old tire out of the frozen ground.
