[SweetIron]

that sounds do-able. I have trees that I can stretch the rope along. Great idea whoever thought of it! Though I bet that it is relatively ancient..

[WashingtonBay]

It's how backcountry horsemen have secured horses at night for a long time. It's really a very safe way to tie. Very forgiving and elastic, yet hard to break. Horses don't seem to sit back on it if they get startled, they tend to circle, and since it's very giving and there's no hard resistance if they're tied to a single point on the line, they don't tend to panic, they walk it off.

[dotgotcalm]

Yep, higher is better! Let a saddles horse hook the line with the horn ad watch the wreck! WB, your barn area looks like mine! What?!? Who said trees aren't useful.

I use a high line or a rope dropped down from a tree limb, away from the trunk, to teach colts to stand tied. It really is a lot better than tying them to a solid object to start with. A whole lot less pulling and sitting back.

[Beeks]

Originally Posted by dotgotcalm

Yep, higher is better! Let a saddles horse hook the line with the horn ad watch the wreck! WB, your barn area looks like mine! What?!? Who said trees aren't useful.

I use a high line or a rope dropped down from a tree limb, away from the trunk, to teach colts to stand tied. It really is a lot better than tying them to a solid object to start with. A whole lot less pulling and sitting back.

Not saying you would make this mistake, but I watched young "horse trainer" do the same thing, only he should have picked a stouter branch that was at least still ALIVE. It was frightening at first, but funny after, as he was one of those, "Watch how great I am" kinda guys who was basically showing off with beer in hand. Hard to act smug, chasing your colt into the hills dragging a horse eating, monster tree branch behind it. Mr. Colt trainer was profoundly humbled after that and tied his colt to the high line without further incident.

[idlewild]

I do Civil War reenacting and this is the method we use to picket all our horses at overnight events. Though, because we are in an area that is scarce for trees, we use A-frame stantions to rig the line up. At either end of the line we drive 3' stakes into the ground and connect the line to those stakes. One end is equipped with a pulley system so that we can tighten the line if needed.

Here is a picture of our setup.

[Beeks]

Nice high line. How long does that take to set up?

[idlewild]

Originally Posted by Beeks

Nice high line. How long does that take to set up?

Thanks. Driving the stakes take the longest, but if we get everybody to pitch in and help we can have it up and horses on it within 20 minutes.

[Beeks]

So the line itself is not secured to the center A poles, so it can slide when being tightened? How are the center A poles secured?

I am thinking about trying this the next time we are in the mountains. Sometimes, even in a forest, it's hard to find two suitable trees, a suitable distance apart in a horse suitable area...LOL

[idlewild]

At the top of the A frame the line is wrapped once or twice around the posts at the top, otherwise the stantion would just fall out from under the rope. When we tighten the line we then just go through and re-adjust the stantions. The A-frames are just three logs secured with long bolts where they intersect. Though, we are starting to just use two poles for the A and then a rope in the middle to keep it from spreading too far, that way we can also adjust how high the A-frame is, the longer the rope the wider the A and the lower the line, the shorter the rope the narrower the A and the higher the line. Make sense?

It's really a nice set-up, at the ends we use chains to attach to the stakes (which, like I said, are 3' long and then I think at least 2" in diameter, takes two strong men taking turns to drive them into the ground), then the rope ties to the chains. Sometimes we'll stake in the bottoms of the A-frames if we have horses that are pullers on the line. But for the most part we don't have too.

The only downside to this kind of line is that it can be easily pulled over if a horse say, spooks and bolts. For the most part we have seasoned campaign horses on the line so we don't have much of a problem, but we've had a couple close calls with greenies where if we hadn't been there to save the day the whole line would have come down and we would have had a big mess on our hands.

I know what you mean about trees! At the place were that picture was taken the only trees were either scrubs or small pines that were growing on the side of a rock Most definitely no place to string a high line! If we have a chance we'll string from trees, but for the most part, that right there is what we have to use, and it gets the job done

[Beeks]

Very informative and yes it makes sense. One more question...how on earth, do you get the stakes BACK out?? Are they wooden or rebar or specially made?