Finally saw why oak bark splitting matters on a job yesterday

We were taking down a mature red oak outside Columbus and the owner asked why the bark had those deep vertical cracks. I looked it up on my phone, turns out frost cracks can hide internal decay that doesn't show until the tree is stressed. Have any of you had a removal where the split bark changed your rigging plan?

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hannah_perry25d ago

Man that frost crack on a red oak outside Columbus got me rethinking my whole setup. Last time I saw one of those, the thing split halfway through the lowering and I ended up with a rigging line that looked like spaghetti. Ngl, bark cracks are just the tree's way of saying "surprise, I've been rotting inside the whole time.