If you have your rope (be it whoopie sling or speed hook leads) larks-headed to your straps, you can use it to take the place of some of your straps if they happen to fall short in reaching around the tree.
When the suspension leaves contact with the tree before turning into rope I don't feel bad about this. However, on my last trip, the rope portion reached nearly to the back of the tree (I have 6ft straps, btw). In the morning I noticed fine ground bark around the rope, and the bark was a little filed flat in that area (nothing you'd notice if you weren't told what to look for).
Is this damage merely cosmetic? Is the thinking that trees of that size have sufficiently thick bark to protect them from things like this? Or should I be getting longer straps for these cases?
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