The pioneering projects I went over yesterday are all good, but, let's up the stakes. Everyone wants to be airborne at least once, while pioneering won't be able to make you fly, it can take you off the ground.
Monkey Bridge:
These are complicated and must be made right, but once complete are tons of fun and can support a ton of weight (Note: I've made several different sizes of Monkey bridges, the smallest being 20ft, the largest around 50ft, pictured).The first item you want to find is a strong base rope, and strong spars to use. You will make at least 2, maybe 3 X-frames (create an X with a Square Lashing, and in this case attaching a spar to the bottom with Diagonal Lashings, you don't want a spar on top as that hinders travel). Next you will have helpers stand the X-frames up while someone runs the bottom rope over the intersection of the poles. This is where you need to use tension. You will want to pull the base rope hard enough so that there is minimum bounce and then either attach it to a tree on either end, or anchoring mechanism (3-stake system is one of the best). Once this is secured, you will run another line on the upper part of both sides of the X-frame to create hand-lines, and wind the line around the poles so they don't slide down. Then you will want to wrap a smaller line so that it joins the base line and hand-lines so it creates a kind of net in case someone falls.
Tower:
Ever want to go rappelling (which I do not suggest setting up a repelling line unless you are trained in climbing and repelling) or spy on an opposing campsite, you can build either an hourglass tower or a box tower. Hourglass towers tend to combine 2 tripods strengthened with cross beams and either joined at the point where the joints come together or at a lower point and joined by Square Lashings. A box tower is usually a set of X-frames (made using Diagonal and Square Lashings) joined in a square box shape. You can add portions to make the tower taller, though you will want to add long cross-spars to join the different pieces. In both towers, you can add floors using the Floor Lashing at different levels, and you can add ladders built using Square Lashings.
Hourglass Tower on the left, and Box Tower on the right
Ladder/Step Bridge/Monkey Bars: All 3 of these items have the same general shape, just designed slightly different. The ladder is simply two parallel bars joined by perpendicular poles attached by way of Square Lashings. You can do the same thing for a Step Bridge by either having the beams closer together or doing a full Floor Lashing. To make a set of monkey bars (who doesn't want to play when they go camping) simply plant 4 spars into the ground and attach the ladder horizontally to them.
The above are all projects that can give you a little bit of height, projects for you to show your dominance over the ground. As you can also tell, once again, all of these projects can be made more complicated by using different methods, more spars, more rope, and of course, more experience. Tomorrow we'll go a little "Medieval"
Fuse it, Lash it, Tie on!
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