Will Koomjian climbs a larch on the Lolo National Forest in Montana. Photo © Sean O’Connor
Dakota Crow was dangling just a few feet off the ground, suspended from the limb of a black walnut tree named Ed.
“Now we’re going to teach you how to tie a safety knot,” Rudy Dietz, a tree–climbing facilitator–in–training, said. Ed is the training tree for Tree Climbing Northwest, a school based in Cave Junction, Oregon. Dietz and fellow facilitator Viola Brumbaugh were guiding Dakota and three of his friends into Ed’s canopy.
Dakota, eleven, stuck his feet out straight, resting comfortably in a specially designed harness and laughing as his friends stood by, cheering him on. Step by step, Dietz showed Dakota how to use the system of ropes and knots to ascend into the tree.
“This is so cool,” Dakota said, leaning back. “I feel like I’m in a hammock.”
“You look like Spiderman,” ten–year–old Kiana Lee said.
“I feel like Spiderman,” Dakota replied.
If you think climbing trees is just for kids, think again. Professional tree climbers have long been using ropes and technical gear to get high into the canopies of giant trees. In the past two decades, a few of them have parlayed their skills into the sport of recreational tree climbing. These days, climbing schools and guides are readily accessible, and climbers compare notes and share techniques on more than a dozen websites and message boards. Companies that make gear specifically for tree climbing have sprung up to support the trend. What began as a niche sport is becoming mainstream, offering people of all ages the chance to go vertical.
Tim Kovar caught the bug two years ago. A master tree–climbing instructor, he’s observing Brumbaugh and Dietz as they take the kids through some elementary techniques. Kovar trained with Peter Jenkins, who founded Atlanta–based Tree Climbers International—the nation’s first tree–climbing school—twenty–four years ago. Last year Kovar moved to Oregon and started Tree Climbing Northwest. He still works with Tree Climbers International as an instructor and head of international operations, where he is helping an ecotourism organization in the Philippines set up a climbing program, and is also finding ways for canopy researchers to get up into trees in Brazil’s rainforests.
Back in Ed, Dakota, his half–sister Kimberly, Kiana and Marley, seven, were all shimmying up ropes into the canopy of the tree. Crickets in a nearby field buzzed in the late–afternoon heat and a breeze blew through the branches. They climbed separate lines, going up into different parts of the tree, spinning around and making monkey noises. They raced each other to see who could get to the top first, and hung upside down with their feet hooked on the rope above them.
Below them, Brumbaugh and Dietz watched closely, offering suggestions and climbing tips and making sure the kids were proceeding safely. For the kids, it was their first tree climb using ropes. For Brumbaugh and Dietz, it was their final exam in a three–day class to become certified tree–climbing facilitators—guides who take people into trees, but don’t teach them how to climb the trees themselves.
“Hey Kiana, what time is it?” Dietz called.
“Um, time to tie a safety knot?” Kiana responded, reaching down and grabbing the rope below her.
Roots and Branches
In the 1980s, Tree Climbers International founder Jenkins was working as an arborist in Georgia, ascending trees to assess, prune or otherwise care for them. When many of his clients expressed interest in climbing, he realized there was an opportunity to bridge the gap between the type of tree climbing enjoyed by kids and the professional climbing he did for a living.
“I started wondering why there wasn’t a sport of recreational tree climbing,” he says. “Unlike rocks, good climbing trees are everywhere, and many of the best climbing trees are on public land. So I got some property in Atlanta with two giant oak trees and started taking people climbing.”
Jenkins thinks that one of those oaks, named Nimrod, is the most– climbed tree in the world. He says he’s led thousands of people high into its branches during guided climbs and in climbing classes.
When recreational tree climbing first became popular, many techniques were adopted from methods used by professional arborists. But in the past ten years the sport’s popularity has increased sharply, leading to an influx of new ideas and methods.
Tobe Sherrill, owner of SherrillTree, a Greensboro, North Carolina–based company that sells climbing supplies to arborists, created a separate catalog for recreational tree–climbing equipment. Sales, he says, have tripled in the last year and a half. New climbers have introduced different techniques, knots and equipment, often taken from other sports such as sailing, rock climbing and caving.
“At first the majority of innovation was coming from the [arborists], who are doing this five days a week and are trying to make it more comfortable,” Sherrill says. “But now a lot of gear is coming from rock–climbing and rescue industries.”
As the demand for gear rises, companies that sell and manufacture equipment specifically for recreational tree climbing have emerged. Kovar’s business is in partnership with another Cave Junction company, New Tribe, which markets its own equipment designs.
New Tribe cofounder Sophia Sparks says that the first time she went up in a tree, she used a rock–climbing harness.
“It was a really great time,” she says. “But oh, my aching butt.”
Sparks, a seamstress, thought she could make something more comfortable. She drafted a pattern for a harness designed for sitting and stitched together a prototype. The harness became New Tribe’s first product. The company also makes a hammock–like device called a tree boat, designed for sleeping in the canopy.
Now mainstream companies are catching on. A few years ago, Petzl, a company that makes technical outdoor gear such as headlamps and rock–climbing equipment, started marketing some of their helmets, mechanical ascenders and camming devices to tree climbers and arborists.
The new techniques and equipment make it possible for just about anyone to get up into a tree.
“When I was training with Peter [Jenkins], he had me take two seventy–five–year–old women up into the treetops,” Kovar says. “We got them up twenty–five feet and they were just tickled pink. They were sitting up there reminiscing about climbing trees when they were girls.”
For their final exam, Dietz and Brumbaugh rigged one of the lines with extra pulleys, a set–up that tree climbers have nicknamed “the super system.” It provides more mechanical advantage to the climber, making it easier to ascend. When they saw that Kimberly was having a hard time getting up the rope, they brought her down and put her on the super system.
“I really liked that one,” she says after the climb. “The rest of them were kind of hard to get up, but that one was really easy.”
Big Trees, Public Lands
With better gear and increased exposure from the media, including articles in the New York Times and Backpacker and a recent cover story in National Geographic Adventure, more people are climbing trees than ever before. While that might be great for business, it raises serious concerns about climber safety and the well–being of the trees.
Done right, tree climbing is actually a very safe sport, which is one of the reasons experts recommend would–be climbers take a class before attempting to ascend a tree. Kovar teaches all his instructors and facilitators to use backup safety systems that prevent climbers from accidentally descending. He belays all climbers as they descend, and every climbing tree he uses is rigged with one line designated as a rescue line. Facilitators certified by Tree Climbers International also have to successfully perform a timed rescue as part of their testing.
“As far as I’m aware, this is the safest method out there,” Kovar says. “We’ve put more than 50,000 people up in trees worldwide and no one affiliated with [the company] has ever had a serious accident.”
While people often climb in their backyards and in parks, the trees in the national forests are popular because they’re often taller and more remote. Tree Climbers International and other schools and guide services, including Tree Climbing USA, located in Fayetteville, Georgia, and the Pacific Tree Climbing Institute in Eugene, Oregon, take people onto public lands where it’s easier to find climbing trees in areas that have never been logged. Kovar and Sparks have a favorite spot in Oregon’s Siskiyou National Forest that Tree Climbing Northwest uses frequently for classes and guided climbs.
Tree–climbing schools and guide services that charge people need permits to use trees on public lands. But folks just going out for a climb with friends need not make any special arrangements.
“Our concerns focus on the personal safety of the climbers and on making sure they’re using all of the established safety practices,” says Glen Sachet, public affairs specialist for the Pacific Northwest Region of the U.S. Forest Service. “Where regulations could enter in would be to protect habitat for threatened or endangered species; for example, if there are any nest sites in the trees being climbed, or any rare species of lichens and ferns.”
Another concern Sachet cited was the impact of tree climbing on the trees themselves, something most commercial schools and guide services are keenly aware of.
“It’s a Catch–22,” Kovar says. “I love teaching tree climbing and sharing it with people, but I’m worried about trees being over–climbed. If you’re not climbing trees correctly there’s a big potential of hurting the trees.”
With proper care and techniques, tree climbing has almost no impact on a tree, Kovar says. Climbers can use special devices to protect the bark so the ropes don’t dig a groove into the tree. Careful climbers spend most of their time dangling from ropes, never touching the tree. But careless or untrained enthusiasts who climb onto branches can easily damage bark, delicate mosses, lichens and ferns growing high up in the trees’ canopies. Experienced climbers look for trees that are uninhabited, but if they happen upon nesting birds or other wildlife, they try to avoid them.
Kovar says that some people who come to Tree Climbing Northwest worry that climbing will hurt the trees. “Once I start explaining to them how it works and showing them, they almost always realize there’s no reason to be concerned,” he says.
Teaching people how to climb safely and to protect the trees while doing so is the goal of professional tree–climbing schools and guide services. An instructional DVD put out by Tree Climbers International, called “Tree Climbing Basics,” even includes a section on ethics.
“Our goal is to come back later and see no trace that we were ever in the tree,” says Catie Robertson, who works with the Pacific Tree Climbing Institute. “We ascend up the ropes, so we’re not actually climbing the tree. Where the line goes over the branch, we run the rope through tubes called ‘cambium savers’ that protect the bark.”
Tim Firnstahl of Seattle wanted to learn how to climb at a certified school for his own safety and the safety of the trees, so he drove down to Cave Junction to take a class at Tree Climbing Northwest. Afterward, he headed to the New Tribe store, where he loaded up his shopping cart with ropes, throw bags, cambium savers, gloves, locking carabiners and everything else he’ll need to climb the redwoods in his backyard.
“Before I took this class I had been living in two dimensions,” he says. “Now I can explore going vertical.”
At sixty–four years old, Firnstahl seemed to have rediscovered the kid in him, as he talked about how he couldn’t wait to get home and put his new gear to use.
“There is a certain mystical quality to this,” he says. “In a tree, you’re up there 100 feet, entirely by yourself and you’re in another world. And here’s this living being that’s 500 years old. It’s the biggest, oldest living thing you’ve ever been near, and you’re with it.”
At the end of his final exam, Dietz, the student facilitator, pulled the climbing lines down from Ed and watched them fall with a zip and a gentle thud. He passed his training, and the future is wide open.
“I want to open my own tree climbing operation in Portland, [Oregon,] and incorporate tree climbing with environmental education,” he says. “When you can get kids, or even adults, into a different, totally unfamiliar environment, you really can change the way they see things. You have the potential to change their outlook, and really, their lives.”