Tree Climbers International - Guided conifer climb

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TOPIC: Guided conifer climb

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#131391

michaeljspraggon (User)

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Posts: 119

Guided conifer climb 8 Months, 1 Week ago

On Monday I climbed a 100ft Grand Fir with my friend Jackie, who is also the sister of my climbing partner Dave. She has recently started learning tree climbing with double rope technique as part of her college horticulture course. I wanted to show her something different - climbing a tall conifer and the experience of actually climbing a tree, not a rope. To minimise impact on the tree I only climb it about twice a year.

The tree is in Penn Wood, a large ancient wood near my home, which dates back to Roman times. A few years ago the Woodland Trust with the help of local residents raised enough money to buy the wood and save it from becoming a golf course. Few areas around here are as diverse as Penn Wood, with Beeches, Oaks (some veterans), many types of native and foreign conifers, a grove of young Californian trees (Sitka Spruce, Coast Redwoods Western Hemlocks etc.) long avenues of Grand and Douglas Firs, stunning Rhodedendons as big as houses, deer, cows, woodland art projects and so on...

Anyway, I digress. I came up with a way for Jackie to climb to the top in complete safety with me climbing just below offering encouragement. It's most probably been done many times before but I thought I'd share it with you:

First I climbed the tree with the static rope dangling from my harness so that the rope followed the climbing route. My route was fairly straight so there was very little rope drag. Once at the top I double-wrapped a sling around the trunk and clipped a carabiner on. I then pulled half the rope through, tied a double figure-of-8 in the rope and clipped this into the biner. Then I abseiled down the other side of the rope.

On the ground, I put an ascender on the rope and attached it to Jackie's harness. She then climbed to the top following my initial route, with the ascender advancing itself up the rope as she climbed. Afterwards, she simply switched to the other side of the rope and abseiled down.

The whole thing worked extremely well and was completely safe. Jackie obviously enjoyed the climb because she wants to do more. I would never have believed this a year ago!

Michael