Doing a bulb and ballast change on a light pole this afternoon, when I got a nasty rope burn. The pole has a hinge in the middle, once you unbolt the bottom there is normally a crank to lower and raise it. Occasionally there isn't a crank, so you tie a tether to it and slowly lower it with that. Any other one I've lowered this way have been balanced nicely so it took little effort to lower and raise. This particular one was really top heavy for some reason. When I undid the bolt it immediately swung out. I quickly reached for the nylon tether to stop it. Bad idea!!! The rope burned through my leather gloves and into my hands. At one point I had enough grip that the rope yanked me 4 feet into the air. That's where I left go,and dropped back down. The end of the rope hit my hard hat and knocked it off.(better that than slapping me in the face). The light came down and broke the windsock off the top. Needless to say I called someone down the road to help bring it back up. Tomorrow I have to fill out an incident report. That was four hours ago, and my hand burns like hell if it isn't in cold water. Lesson learned.

any way one of these could help in the future? It's a friction hitch or porta wrap, I've used em to lower 500 lb logs to the ground, when I used to kill trees in my off time.

http://www.sherrilltree.com/Professional-Gear/Lowering-Devic...

An old cowboy friend / mentor always said to me 'ropes are as dangerous as guns, it's just that ropes go on and guns go off' Good thing you weren't standing in a bight!

FWIW (and not to be smartass): That's why belay gloves have multiple layers of of leather along the rope path. I am a big fan of the Petzl Medium and Heavyweight Belay Gloves. Synthethic glove palms suck, as fast moving rope generates more than enough friction to melt them.

The Portawrap is kind of cool.



ATB,
Sam

No Sam, the porta wrap is the shiznit. Of course I made my own... Being a weldngod and all... I have used them up in trees ,so I can work w/ no ground man or even my wife as a ground man! You can hold 1,000 lbs w. 2 fingers, and lower it so slow and easy...

Man that thing would have been helpful today for sure. Worst part of it was after we had the light put back up, I was talking to the operator, and he asked why I didn't get the crank from the operators shack. They got tired of replacing rusted ones and just started storing them inside. Teach me not to ask questions......:embarrased:

was guna make a new post but your description of the setting was oddly familiar