Charlottesville Area Masters of Real Ale

I'm attaching two pictures for giggles.  This is the most basic set up ever that I have been running for years and years.  It is a post with a cross bar, nails and twine.  I really should upgrade this year and I'm starting to thing about how.

The first pic is the naked set-up.  For those worried about your hops, these are just breaking the ground at the end of April.  They were a few years old at this point, too.

The second one was in late May after I had gone out of town.  Obviously, if you leave hop vines alone during peak growing time, they go out of control.  I took this before I trimmed all of the bottom back.  One of my daughters is in this one for perspective.

Nice cross

Seriously though, at the height of the growing/harvesting season, if you were to clip back all the vines at the base, how heavy are the cone-laden vines?

The vines aren't heavy at all. If you have a structure that can hold the some twine slightly tight that runs down to some stakes in the ground, it'll hold a pound or two of vines.

This may sound a bit simplistic but what do I have to do to view your attached photos? Sometimes simple things are difficult. Like trying to figure why your keg parts won't fit together and then realizing that maybe you should lube them and pay more attention to what fits what.
Hmmn. Not that I just had that problem--its more of a generalized example.

Hmmm.  You should be able to just click on them and make them bigger.  Are you getting the preview picture?  Sometimes they won't appear unless you are logged in.....

If that doesn't work, I can send you the full size pictures, but they are much bigger.  (~120k vs 3.2mb)