Tree climbing

[luzula]

On Saturday night I put up a treetop banner to promote the May Day march and also encourage people to join the union! Well, I didn't do it alone--there was another climber, we did one tree each, and then a person as ground service to pass up the ropes for the banner and stuff. I had chosen a perfect spot for a lot of people to see it, but in retrospect one of the trees was a little difficult. In fact my fellow climber failed at it when we first tried on Friday! He is primarily a rock climber and so his instinct is to actually climb each part of the tree from below. While I am taught by arborists, so my instinct is to strategically place a rope in the place that will best let me get where I want. So we switched trees last night. I am somewhat ashamed of how satisfying it was to succeed where someone who is stronger than me failed.

I really love tree climbing. I get into this hyper-concentrated state where I don't notice time passing or even that it was drizzling on me. It's the perfect melding of mind and body--obviously it's a very physical activity, but you also have to think hard. I think I am pretty good at it because:
- I can think strategically about what the best route up would be,
- I have a very clear map in my head of how my equipment is deployed at each moment and how I am secured,
- I can be creative about using the equipment (I mean, it's basically mostly rope, carabiners, and thinner rope slings which you can make friction knots with, but you can put that to a lot of purposes when you need a new anchor point or foothold or way to leverage yourself upward). It's such a pleasurable use of technology.

I would probably suck at rock climbing, though, because I am not strong enough, particularly not in my hands. As I understand it, rock climbing is much more about using only your body to get up, with the equipment only as a fail-safe in case you fall.

Comments

[tei]

WOAH i had no idea sport tree climbing was a thing! I do rock clombing but am not super involved because a) I live in the prairie so threre’s basically no opportunity to climb outdoors, and I like indoor climbing just OK, and b) as well as strenth, being tall is a huge advantage. I work hard on my strength training so it’s frustrating to see people (mostly men) who are demonstrably weaker than me climba route easily that is a huge struggle for me because I just can’t reach the holds.

We do have the occasional tree here... I wonder if people climb them for fun.

[luzula]

It's not actually popular as a sport AFAIK? I mean, the people who do it here are mostly either arborists who do it for work, or activists who do it to hang banners and/or occupy threatened forests.

And interesting, I hadn't thought of the height advantage in rock climbing!

[jesse_the_k]

Where do the arborists learn to climb? Are there arboreal apprenticeships?

[luzula]

Different in different countries, I think? Some have apprenticeships, some have formal education. Also to be an arborist you need to know more than how to climb--it's also about how to prune trees, the diseases and health of trees, how to handle chain saws, how to work near power lines, etc.