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While visiting the National Museum of Iceland, I came across these Bronze Age fishing hooks used by Vikings. The largest one is approximately the same size as the Sea Demons we use, which immediately reminded me of my suspension family, so I wanted to share the picture I snapped.

All too often in the suspension world, someone comes up with an idea for a suspension that is amazing but we don’t have the exact right tool for the job. Being the creative family that we are, this situation becomes an episode of MacGyver, which is awesome, however all too often we see this situation unfold in unsafe ways.

A few weeks ago, I showed up to a suspension day and was asked to take care of an 8 point lotus suspension, 4 hooks in the legs, 2 in the back, and 2 in the chest. Hell yeah I want to do this! So, we get Chris cleaned and hooked, which was awesome because it meant working with some old friends, one of whom coached me up my first time. Anyhow, back to Chris, we get him ready to go, and then it’s time to start rigging and I hit a roadblock. The only rigs we have are small rigging plates, which would be fine other than the hooks in the chest. If I’d continued to use a standard bearclaw, he’d have riglines running directly in his face and pressing into his chest and back.

Once I realized that hanging the bear claw in it’s normal vertical orientation, I started trying to use a couple of carabiners to hang it horizontally. Well, none of the carabiners were long enough to really reach a central carabiner without their angles being way too extreme. I then remembered that I brought me a tall aluminum rig that had various holes along the top and bottom edges, and tried the 3 carabiner configuration with it. Not only were the angles too acute, it was remarkably unbalanced side to side. Starting to get frustrated now because the rigging was getting to me and also because Chris was sitting patiently with hooks in all set to go. I decided to use some cord to cradle the rig, which took a few iterations to get right.

This iteration was really close, but it still suffered from the same acute angles problem as I’d run into with carabiners AND I didn’t trust it to not shift front to back once Chris got swinging. At this moment, I remembered working with Oliver back in the day at an old ROP SusCon where he did some fantastic static rigging and wrapped the cord bundles near the carabiner to keep the cords all in place and to tidy them up. Bingo! I cradled the rig with a loop of cord created with a tape knot, looped the two sides of it through a carabiner three times each, and then bound that together with an additional piece of cord to prevent the rig from tilting. From there on out, it was a case of simply running lines to the hooks and getting them balanced, and with that, Chris was airborne.

Pics courtesy of James SantangeloEven though we didn’t have the ideal rig on hand, by using some troubleshooting skills and relying on previous experiences and knowledge, we were able to pull off a great suspension. Chris thoroughly enjoyed it, we had a fantastic time making it happen, and it contributed to an all around fun day.

Since I’ve moved to Toronto (don’t worry, ihung is still fully operational in Ohio!), I’ve returned to my roots, so to speak, and am once again working alongside I Was Cured, the team I initially trained under. Mike has done a great job of kickstarting the Toronto suspension community in the last few months with some great private meets. This past Sunday was the last meet of the year, which ended with an interesting 5 point resurrection, cut down to 3, then to a single Sea Demon placed vertically just above the navel. Definitely impressive!

For more information on I Was Cured, check out their (our?) website: faithinmodernsteel.