Skills Outline

The goal is to come up with a skills list for climbers. Let's see what we can come up with. Maybe lets step back a bit from the teachers/student dichotomy that reared its head in that last posting and create a skills list for climbers to voluntarily assess themselves. If you are sure you are capable of all of these, then you should know all of these skills well enough able to teach them (subject to your skill at teaching.)

I'll propose 3 assumptions, and 3 ideas for organization.

----We all want to be safe, progressive climbers, and to pass it along to our students.
----We want to balance personal style with solid justifications for every life-support situation.
----We want to have a general skills list that can be agreed upon rather than a specific knot by knot procedure list that everyone disagrees with.


----And a basic outline to begin with. When adding something, maybe suggest a section letter so they can be assembled into a coherent whole more easily.

a. Tree and ropework basics
a. Ropes
b. Knot families
c. Tree access/line rigging
d. DdRt
e. SRT ascending
f. SRT descending
g. Basic pulley rigs
h. Rescues, backups, belays

----If you disagree on something with someone, try to propose an alternative that encompasses both viewpoints.....
----Lastly, remember that everyone knows something and nobody knows everything. If someone comes up with a great area for you to improve your own skills, lets use that as the inspiration to go and practice it in the backyard!

So, lets generate some material!

Hooray for redpanda!!

I've been thinking about posting something like this for a few weeks and just never got off my duff.

Unfortunately, I can't add to the list right now, but do want to say that I'm sure we can collectively come up with what would amount to a syllabus for recreational climbers.

I would hope that TCI and others would share such information with us. I'm not asking that they give away information that could earn them a living, but the truth is that if someone wants it, they simply would go through the training, take notes and then publish it.

As I suggested in an earlier post, if someone would publish such a syllabus or even a full-blown course, it would be marketable. After all, don't we all have "The Tree Climbers Companion;" and probably "Recreational Tree Climbing;" and maybe "On Rope?"

Seems to me that the first to publish such a thing would earn (a) some bread, and (b) our heartfelt thanks.

There are many components to tree climbng. Each component that Redpanda listed will have many sub components. The subject of tree climbing will be a large conversation with many subject headings that will be separate from each other so the thread will stay true to the topic.

This is no small feat, tree climbing community. You are asking to eat an elephant, with many ramifications that will impact the future of our fledging activity.

This will not be a quick conversation either. I have no idea how long the conversation will take place nor do I know what the end product will look like. Are we up to this as a community?

This topic has been ebbing and flowing for quite some time, and the ones who are doing the majority of the teaching (that I know of) are bringing up at least 150+ first time climbers every month. These are the guys and gals that have put in the 'dirt time' working with the public. It all looks good on paper but it needs to be put into action - logic is not the same as experience.
The reason for this post is to remind ALL of YOU that a majority of us are meeting in Nebraska this Fall, even the instructors from as far away as Japan and Taiwan will be attending this rendezvous and we will be sharing and learning what has been working and what has knot! This way we can make sure that we are all on the same page.
So start making notes come up with an outline and meet us in Nebraska.
Hope 2 c ya there:)

First off, I'd like to thank Redpanda for starting this outline. I believe, with the help of other individuals, this will be a promising thread to teach and learn.

I have only been in the arboricultural field for around a year now. I moved up the ranks quickly in my company. Started climbing from the first day, to running crews six months later.

The company that I work for has about a dozen employees, three foreman, including myself. I can say proudly that I work for the best company in our area with two of the most qualified arborist around. But, there is only so much that I can learn from them. There is only so much I can learn from rereading "The Tree Climbers Companion" and misc. other books. Now, I have an opportunity to learn new ideas and techniques from others around the world.

The idea of trying to setup a universal guideline is great. Though I work with two other arborist, they each have a completely different way of training and running crews. I have tried to take the best of what they have taught me and what I've read to form a better way of handling job situations. I want to be safe and excel in this field.

What bothers me is the "tone" of treeman's post. It seems to have negative connotations with the desire to help out fellow climbers. I understand that this is your business and you don't want to lose your footing. I don't think that'll happen. I know that I'll be moving to the Atlanta area soon and am planning on taking your courses. Hopefully that doesn't sound hypocritical, but I realize that there is a difference between written and first-hand education.

I wish that I could help Red with his outline, but I am in a constant state of learning at this piont-in-time. I can, however, provide a good, honest opinion of what might be to complicated for a "newbie" to understand.

Well there you go. First down.

While I disagree with all but one of the reasons the scouts have listed, they have brought about a good point: none of us have considered threat assessment as part of our standards discussions. Our uniform standards should include the assessment of structure within the tree as part of training. The tree itself speaks volumes about it's ability to support a climber, evidence of actual strenght has been established by the safety record of those currently partipating, though any arborist will tell you that not every limb will support one's weight. This said most lead climbing rock climbers know that all protection measures are not failproof, hidden conditions always exist, and may cause failure.
All elevated operations involve risk and assume failure is inevitible. The trick is to provide for recognition of the obvious flaws.

As far as backup is considered, I personally climb on two points of contact as long as two points are available

The time is now.

Climb Safe!
Icabod

This is what I see when I look at Mike Oxman’s photo. This commentary has nothing to do with the person Paul Sisson.

1. I see a man branch walking a tree with an established moss mat on the tree surfaces. Moss mats are fragile and can take decades, if not centuries, to mature on a tree. They are easily kicked off with a light boot swipe. In the case of branch walking where friction is needed to walk backwards, one can expect extensive moss damage. Moss is very slippery and much more fragile when wet as well. That is why it grows so well in the northwest trees; is wet all of the time. This is certainly not “leave no trace” climbing. Imagine how this tree will look with a couple of dozen climbers ascending this tree. This is in a park too. Not a very good model for the public to see.
2. The man below has no head protection. I am not sure what he is doing with the rope but he is certainly engaged with the climb. Trees are more fragile than rock. A gentle touch of a rope can send a high dead branch crashing down, sometimes without notice until it makes impact. It could be a small dead branch the diameter of a quarter but it can cause injury when it falls from height.

These two observations deal with climbing standards; leave no trace and proper protection for the ground team. There are many parts to the puzzle of assembling a working standard for responsible recreational tree climbing that is not only safe for the climbers, but friendly to the hosts of our climbs- the trees themselves.

Tree climbing is not yet a mainstream activity as is rock climbing. I share many of the concerns of canopy researchers that the human masses will hurt or kill that which they love, in this case trees. For that reason I am grateful that tree climbing has not rocketed into the spotlight with all of the media attention TCI has received the past 21 years.

This brings us back to the conversation of what it is to be responsible in our climbing technique and our relationship to the trees we climb. A new folder will appear shortly on this message board and it will be titled “Tree Climbing Standards Conversation”. We will break the parts down as Redpanda suggested but with more detail. This community will have an opportunity to contribute to a gathering of ideas to be later assembled and presented to you as a community for further input.

I personally want to thank all of you that participate on this message board. I encourage those that just read the postings here to participate as well, no matter what level of tree climbing experience you have. Your postings confirm my opinion that tree climbers are a special kind of people- kind, sharing, very intelligent, rebellious, inventive, risk taking, controversial, not average kind of people. Thank you for making this message board a great place to hang out and get different opinions and ideas.

Mike Oxman said-
“This climb did not affect these trees negatively. I do not believe it is realistic to leave no trace of recreational tree climbing activities. There will be some evidence of impact, including moss mat disturbance. It is unnecessary damage that must be avoided. The test will be reasonableness, not detectability.

These trees were crown-cleaned by the rec climbers to remove hazardous dead branches. This is not Leave No Trace, but it is necessary, as we climb here frequently. It is also a safety service we provide to other users of the park.

The ground guy should have been wearing his hardhat. He had not yet put it on, but climbs barefoot. Should we institute a boot requirement?”



Climbing trees with moss mats requires special attention to every contact you make with the tree. This includes rope contact as well. In the tropics you will have added sensitive plants to dodge such as epiphytes and other growing things. The climber’s impact can be greatly reduced if a higher level of climbing technique and respect is applied.

Assuming damage will occur during your climb reminds me of some of the people I used to climb rock with as a young man that were there to “conquer the rock.” It was a cavalier attitude that destroyed a lot of good climbing routes because of careless climbing technique. Your single climb in the public park tree will be duplicated by climbers that follow you. Your little boot swipe will be followed by many other boot swipes as people see what you are doing and get excited to want to join in with what you are experiencing. This is what climbers do- often at the expense of what is being climbed. Trees can not only get disfigured, but they can also be killed. This is a problem with sensitive climbing trees.

“It’s only a moss mat”, you say. Do you know for certain that a tree does not have a relationship with the moss and that both moss and tree do not derive a mutual gain by their existence together? We do not know these answers yet as scientists are in the early stages of research on this subject.

Back to the photo. Why is the man walking out on a moss matted branch? He has no cutting tools, like to trim dead wood. Is this a climbing demonstration? What is the purpose of this technique demonstration that can only scruff the moss mat? It appears he could have used a redirect rope technique to avoid the pulling back physics of his rope angle that requires him to have hard friction on a branch with his boots to prevent him from swinging back to the tree.

The man on the ground appears to be holding something with the use of a lowering device because of the 90 degree rope angle and the rope body wrap being employed with his butt. Is he lowering something about to be cut? It is equally the cutters responsibility to check everything with their team before something is cut, (which includes the use of a hard hat). This includes his ground support, in this case the rope man. What’s up here? Am I missing something? Volunteers must be carefully watched in all tree work operations. Let’s bring up the subject of shoes in another posting.

Your reply did not address any of my questions about your photo. The questions relate to specific tree climbing standards for trees with moss mats.