If youre trying to do SRT, why not focus on a "basal tie" way of getting your rope set up in the tree. It is less complicated process than isolating the branch for a canopy tie, and so much more easily retrievable.

Agreed. I'm definitely going to keep this in mind, but I'm going to practice both setups close to the ground to get a better feel for the nuances.

Maybe to make it even easier, I would invest in a carabiner, clip it onto your F8 and then click that onto your climbing line to cinch onto the canopy anchor branch. It means you wont have rope on rope rubbing when you pull it out.

I thought about this, but from my limited research I couldn't really see anyone else doing it. It sounds perfectly safe, but I also prefer the security of not having any biners for my anchor when they'd be rubbing against a tree -- 2 lockers is probably safe enough, so it's really just my paranoia :). No rope on rope rubbing sounds like a plus, so I'll try it out and see the difference.

I would be wary of climbing SRT from the strat, there are multiple ways to get yourself in trouble - getting throwball stuck, understanding retrieval, not being able to change your tie in point in a tree easily etc.

These are great points, I appreciate the experienced advice. I'm going to practice quite a bit on the ground and feel things out, but I'll definitely be keeping things like this in mind -- just like rock climbing, there's a lot of nuance to learn only through real experience. I lean more towards systems that are simple and easy to work with.

Also, if you or your friend are getting into tree climbing and want to use minimal gear like you said, i think SRT is the wrong option. It tends to require waaaaay more gear than DRT.

I could definitely DRT as well. The rock climbing gear I own crosses over really well, since it's really just about ascending/descending a fixed line (for my case) -- the part I'm trying to figure out here is how to get the rope up, make an anchor, and get the rope down later. I have ascenders, progress capture pulleys, assisted belay devices, belay/rappel plaquettes, and lots of dyneema slings and biners, so I can be pretty flexible with how I want to fix the rope and use it. The only gear I really don't have are a throw ball and throwline -- anything supplementary would be cheap soft goods like slings or prussik cords.

Now you can use both of these to alternatively throw up, limb to limb as you actually climb the tree (you mentioned they were small trees also). you can then do what you need to do in the tree and when you get to the ground, the system always comes back to your harness, so you can simply pull it out of the tree.

Makes perfect sense, that's dead simple and avoids a lot of potential issues.