Wisdom Garnered from Years of Climbing
Charly Pottorff, Jr., owner of Wildcat Tree Service, a 12-year TCIA member company based in Manhattan, Kansas, only stopped climbing at age 70. Now 80, he shares his key to that longevity – staying fit. “I could probably still climb, but my daughter took my climbing gear away from me, and she’s running the business […]
Tools of the Trade
“The best investment is the tools of one’s own trade.” – Ben Franklin As a production climbing arborist and trainer, I am often presented with the question of “What tools do I need to do the job?” Unfortunately, there is no easy one-size-fits-all answer. The reality is that the answer is mainly contingent upon the […]
Canopy Anchors, Part 1
This article is based on a demonstration by Craig Bachmann at the TCI Magazine Trainer’s Test Kitchen demo area during TCI EXPO ’21 in Indianapolis, Indiana, this past November. A canopy anchor is a climbing system that anchors the rope in the canopy of a tree. While a moving rope system (MRS) typically uses a […]
Women’s Climbing Event Spins Off at Davey Tree
It started with me planning a small, recreational climbing day with a few women from Davey Tree in the Twin Cities area. It ended with 40 women getting together in Chicago, empowering and supporting each other – as well as doing a bunch of climbing. My inspiration for this event was a weekend in Massachusetts […]
All the Canopy’s a Stage
As arborists, we work mostly out of the public eye, concealed in leafy canopies, in work zones cordoned off behind caution tape and cones. The general public appears not too aware of our work. While tree-climber videos are abundant on YouTube, at last check they still can’t compete with the 34 million views of a […]