When it comes to teaching climbing in the tree care industry, we need to focus more on strategy and efficiency.
Like most of you, I started on the ground, watching. Generally, that seems like the first step for any wannabe climber. You watch to get a sense of what a climber does. In this country, there’s no particular lesson plan, no progressive course work nor structure or timetable in which you will receive all the vital information necessary to be a climber.
Rather, learning to climb is often on-the-job training from whomever you happen to be working under – literally. Just bits and pieces of information, and as much as you can possibly glean from observing from the dripline. And that’s in between running under your teacher to gather their brush, run their ropes and tend to any other need that may arise.
If you’re lucky, the climber you’re looking up to shares a little insight before they head up, or they narrate the different aspects of their climb while aloft. If you’re really lucky, they know what they’re doing and share accurate knowledge.
Yes, it’s often a tough world for a new climber, wrought with myth, confusion, ignorance and misinformation. The light at the end of the tunnel is getting brighter though. The industry is progressing. Published articles, trade shows and skills demonstrations featuring climbing are becoming more frequent and widespread. The gospel of good arboriculture is even showing up more on the internet. Hopefully, in the coming years, the age of trial-and-error tree work will be behind us.
Yet, for all the exponential advances in almost every aspect of the field, there seems to be one area that’s not receiving enough attention. It’s a topic I’ve become somewhat preoccupied with: strategies for efficiency.
Many of us were taught without a plan
Most climbers I speak with have a story similar to mine. You were told how to get up the tree. Get the 40-foot ladder, go up and place your rope over the closest branch with a pole tool or throw a monkey’s fist from up there, if you couldn’t do it from the ground. Or, you put some time in with a throw line till you got good enough at it to not look like you were wasting time to an impatient boss.
Body thrusting turned to foot locking, which then turned to stationary rope system (SRS) ascent. But the formula was the same – progress to the top, if you hadn’t already nailed the top spot, and get to work.
You were told what to do once you were up there. Get the deadwood, hangers and broken branches and/or reduce weight from the tips. But somehow, no one really mentioned much about planning or routing. “Go up there and figure it out” is what they used to say. “Divide the tree into sections or levels” is about as much as I’ve ever heard on the topic.
While it’s better than nothing, it doesn’t really cover what I believe to be a key element in the climbing process. In my opinion, rushing into a task without a plan of attack isn’t much different than trial-and-error tree work.
Use a strategy
How to approach a climb is a tricky subject to tackle, as there are so many variables. How do you teach something where the conditions in front of a person are different nearly every time? And how do you teach something where the skill levels of the person are also different nearly every time?
I start by analyzing. I organize and categorize the information available so I may come up with a strategy. Approaching the task with a strategy makes me more efficient. There are three main, interconnected categories: the tree, the work and the tools/tech available.
First, I look at the tree. Now this, of course, is something we’re already doing in earnest. Inspection for health and hazards is our first step. But are you taking an overall inventory of the canopy characteristics? You’ve undoubtedly focused on the height and width. The experienced tree climber has already even started to make decisions about where the good tie-in points are to access different areas.
Let’s look a little closer. What does height mean for you? Well, personally, I may begin to simplify my ascent technique for a shorter tree. I may not even pull out my throw line for, say, a shorter tree with a busy, dense canopy, where tangling up a throw line is a very real possibility. On the flip side of that coin, a very tall tree may warrant breaking out the Big Shot, longer ropes and my SRS ascent gear.
So now let us look at the characteristics of the branches. Are they disproportionately long? Are they straight? Do they grow upward or slope down? Are they slim or fat? What does it matter? Well, if I’m looking at many down-sloping branches with few redirect options to rappel from, I may consider using the built-in mechanical advantage of a moving rope system (MRS) to navigate those.
Another thing I hone in on is canopy structure. Is it dense with foliage, or are there big areas of dead space? How am I going to bridge those gaps? Are they so large that I cannot make swings or progress climb to different areas to reset or redirect, or am I going to have to set more than one line?
All the aforementioned qualities of a canopy can start to shape my approach. Certain aspects will immediately eliminate a technique or reveal it to be the most viable option.
Where is the work?
The next thing I look at is where in the tree the work is and what needs to be done. Is it tip work, interior or both? Does the top need to be reduced, the sides or both? Am I target pruning certain areas, or is the entire tree in need of pruning? Will there be rigging involved, or can I just let things fly?
The answers to these questions also can help me eliminate certain tools or techniques. For example, if the tree is very tall but the work is just on the lower canopy, elevating it off of structures, it may not make sense to get the Big Shot to go for the highest tie in.
It may even be a job more efficiently accomplished with pole tools, standing on the structures or ladders to reach the intended cuts. If there is cutting to do in the interior or rigging needs to be employed, it may not be a good idea to use a basal-anchored climbing system. By cross-referencing work location and type with the information gathered about tree shape and canopy characteristics, I now have points to plot a route and an idea of what tools and techniques I’ll need.
To me, this is being strategic so I may be efficient. A side note: When plotting my route, whenever possible I try to travel between stations and minimize having to go up and down. Generally speaking, ascending requires more effort than lateral movement.
Tools and techniques
So now that we have an idea of the attributes of the tree structure we’re dealing with and where we have to go in the canopy, we can turn our focus to the third and final component of the analysis: tools and techniques available to us.
While we’re always striving to learn and improve during the day, we must often play to our strengths. What do you know how to do? What techniques or configurations are you able to set up and execute with the gear you have available? To be most efficient here, you must identify the pros and cons of your available resources to see where they’ll be most applicable.
When I say identify the pros and cons, I mean as they pertain to you. Not what someone or everyone else says or what is popular in the industry. Within the category of tools and techniques falls the personal strengths of the climber.
We are all built a little differently and excel in different areas. I’m relatively tall, thin and flexible. What works for me – in the trees that I work on in the conditions that I work in – may not be best for someone, say, shorter, stockier and rigidly muscle-bound, and in entirely different trees and circumstances. I may sing the praises of certain tools and techniques, but that is because for my body type, general treescape and common tasks I’m typically doing, it is what works best for me.
Find what works best for you. Maximize your own personal body leverage with whatever tools or techniques work best for you personally.
Tying it all together
Let us tie it all together with an example. The tree for the day is a large valley oak (Quercus Lobata), approximately 75 feet tall with a canopy spread of about 90 feet at its widest section. The diameter at breast height is about 5.5 feet. There are large-diameter leads tapering down to longer, skinnier branches curving both upward and downward.
Within the busy canopy, there also are areas of dead space separating sections of the tree. The space is not so vast it cannot be traversed. In some areas, however, it is large enough that even taking redirects on the branches available would not give me a good enough angle to swing to the other sections. I will have to rappel low to make any kind of swing and progress climb up the new section or set more than one rope from the ground.
Right away, I’m thinking of ascending SRS then taking redirects, but I hold that thought. This is a three-pronged system of analysis. I’ve mapped the tree, but I don’t know where I’m going yet. I’ve got to know where/what the work is in the tree. SRS may not be the best course of action if all that needs to be done is clearing the building by a few feet. For that I could just stand on the roof with a power pole saw.
It turns out the work order calls for removal of major deadwood throughout the canopy, as well as target end-weight reduction for the portion of the tree over the building and anywhere else it seems needed. Now I have my map and the destinations to go along with it.
From here, I try to design a route that enables me to visit every part of the canopy with the least number of ascents. In the very least, I want to be able to work as I ascend, pruning areas close to my path. I want to avoid situations where I ascend to the top without having passed an area to prune or redirecting to drop down to prune an area, then having to backtrack through an already-cleared area. It’s not always possible to avoid this, but I just want to minimize it.
The final question
The canopy is mapped, the tentative route plan is set and now it’s time to answer the final question. What tools and techniques do I have available to me to make this happen?
I’ve identified a logical tie-in point to start from, where I could ascend SRS and clear work as I go. I could set more than one line to make it easier to transition over the dead space. I could use a throwing hook to help access the harder-to-reach spots. And I could elect to switch over to MRS to assist with returning from longer limb walks on branches with some tricky shapes.
I elect to keep things more straightforward and, since I must progress climb up each lead to visit the various sections, the choice between MRS and SRS comes down to personal preference in this case, in my humble opinion. I choose SRS, as I can move more swiftly. SRS also opens up a few other anchoring options with special features. In this instance, however, I simply go with a basal anchor. None of the cutting will be taking place near my line, so I feel reasonably comfortable with it. It is time to begin working.
Here endeth the lesson
The last bit of brush hits the ground, my boots touch down and I begin to pull gear. The climb is not over, though. This three-pronged system is not complete without taking a post-climb inventory. Do I feel like my route was efficient with both my time and energy? Was there something I could have done differently, and, if so, how might it have played out?
Are there tools or techniques I didn’t have that could have made something easier? Were there things I did not anticipate? Efficiency can be achieved through strategy. We become more strategic as we learn.
Experience is the best teacher. Don’t forget to collect the lesson at the end of every climb.
Lawrence Schultz is an ISA Certified Arborist and an ISA Certified Municipal Specialist working as a contract climber in the San Francisco Bay area of California.
This article was based on his presentation on the same topic during TCI EXPO ’23 in St. Louis, Missouri. To view a video recording created for that presentation, go to TCI Magazine online at tcimag.tcia.org. Under the Resources tab, click Video.
