Cable lanyard caught my harness D-ring, wrecked my climb in Denver

I switched to a cable core flip line last month thinking it would last longer than my old rope one. Second climb in a commercial cottonwood, the cable bent weird and snagged on my side D-ring while I was repositioning. Took me a good 3 minutes to get unstuck hanging there, and the customer watched the whole thing from their deck. The steel core just doesn't flex like rope does, and that stiffness makes it grab in tight spots. I learned to keep a small gap between the snap hook and the cable end, or use a longer eye splice. Anyone else run into this issue with cable flip lines on spiky species like honey locust or hawthorn?

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the_rose16d ago

You hit the nail on the head there. I got a cable flip line for a big thorny mesquite job and it hung up on my harness so bad I had to unclip and re-clip mid-air, which is no fun at all. The stiffness saves your gear from spikes, but it trades that for a whole new set of snagging headaches.