Disobey Gravity

(rydra_wong asked me to xpost here)


Backstory: some while back, someone asked me what I wanted to do that I'd never done; I said I wanted to go tree climbing, get myself up into an old-growth canopy. (Here in the Pacific Northwest, we have some amazing forests. I'm very familiar with them at ground level, but I hear the canopy is a thing unto itself, and I'd like to see it.) Come Christmas, my partner, grrlpup, gave me an enrollment for a one day tree-climbing workshop. Which happened last Wednesday. :-)

There weren't that many pics, mostly because I was busy all day, and y'know, I can take photos or I can do stuff. But have what photos there are!

So, it was a one day workshop, in an oak grove on the instructor's farm outside of Oregon City. This area of Oregon used to be all oak savannah, although most of the oak groves you see around nowadays are only a hundred years old or so -- in fact, the trees we were to climb were about that age. We had been worried about the weather, but it was nearly perfect: overcast, cool, and dry. Maybe a little too cool for the learning our knots parts of the day, but climbing is enough work that a cool day was nice.

( Pretty! Green! )

We started the day climbing on pre-rigged ropes -- the instructor said that making students begin by learning how to rig their own ropes kills their desire to learn? (Silly peeps! Rigging is cool!)

( technical overview )

After we came down, we spent a while learning knots. Then a while more practicing the knots. Then broke for lunch, then came back to see if we still remembered our knots. Then we learned some cool stuff about how exactly they get the rope up into the trees (clever throwing technique! clever use of hitching!) and how they get the cambrium saver positioned just so (clever use of slip knots!), and then they sent us off to go rig our own ropes.

So we did.

( Rigging photos, for the rope geeks )

And then we climbed.

( Getting ready to climb! )



And the aftermath:

( Blisters! )

Fun day, exhausting day, geeky day, and yes, I would do it again. I have been eyeballing trees ever since we got back! But oh, man, I'm going to have to hit the weight room before I do.