Hello there, this is will and brian from ascending the giants. We were told about this thread from a good friend of ours, and felt that we ought to respond.
The comment about helping canopy researches was taken a little out of context in the video editing, and in retrospect we can understand how it could be interpreted as a put-down. Sorry. We have nothing but respect for full time canopy researchers, or anybody who climbs everyday, and are aware of many of their techniques and how well suited they are to the specific demands of their work. We wanted to help some less experienced biologists who are not going to need to climb everyday. We were meeting some such people at the time, and have met more since then. It seems hard for many of these folks to get trustworthy advice on tree climbing techniques, and we are happy to share our knowledge with good people.
As far as the big shot is concerned, we agree that it is important to secure the highest safe anchor to avoid impact on the tree or its inhabitants. That being said, we have found the big shot to be a good way to do this. We use a 6 or 8 oz bag and a 20 lbs. test braided fishing line, and are able to accurately hit shots in the 200' range. I am told that by modifying the big shot with extra tubing and using a 3 to 1 mechanical advantage to pull it back, one can hit up to 230'. Sure, if you climb redwoods every day a compound bow or crossbow makes sense, but we rarely climb trees more than 250' tall, so the big shot works for us. Also, in our experience the shot pouch is much less likely to get caught up in the canopy than an arrow.
Please, don't confuse what we are doing with some tree equivalent of "peak bagging." We are working with big tree registries to update badly outdated records, and hoping that through publicizing these amazing specimeins we can get people excited about trees. So far we have had some encouraging success.
We put together a website to further this effort, it is at
www.ascendingthegiants.comIf you have any questions, you can e-mail us at
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Thanks for reading
-Will and Brian
