We give a new proof of the Skeletal Lemma, which is the main technical tool in our paper on Hamilton cycles in line graphs [T. Kaiser and P. Vrána, Hamilton cycles in 5-connected line graphs, European J. Combin. 33 (2012), 924-947]. It generalises results on disjoint spanning trees in graphs to the context of 3-hypergraphs. The lemma is proved in a slightly stronger version that is more suitable for applications. The proof is simplified and formulated in a more accessible way.