In an issue dedicated to the “legends” of the industry, there’s no avoiding the name Mark Chisholm. His official tree-climbing career began more than 40 years ago, at age 12, helping with his dad’s business on weekends. He was [...]

Justin Donahue, owner of Donahue Arborists in Honolulu, Hawaii, seasoned International Tree Climbing Championship (ITCC) competitor and a veteran tree worker with more than 30 years in the industry, talks from a place of experience. And fatigue. He’s accustomed to [...]

Perhaps one of the least-sexy topics in all of arboriculture is that of rope management. It doesn’t get the same attention some other topics do, but probably deserves more than it gets. This article is a brief attempt to shine [...]

Jim Kasper, right, and a co-worker conduct a pull test to determine the structural integrity of the tree at the tie-in-point. But how useful is it? Does the TIP pull test actually make sense? Photo courtesy of the author. There [...]

They have names aplenty: knuckle booms, grapple booms, grapple saws, grapple cranes, truck-mounted knuckle booms and knuckle-boom grapple saws, among others. We’ll refer to them as “grapple saws” for this article. Whatever you call them, when you conjure an image [...]