Glad you liked the DVD, we had a ball making it. Luckily, I get to climb the coolest trees wherever I go. I spent this summer in the old growth, and have the pictures to show for it.
What the video doesn't show is that after the 12 of us completed the 2 day Tree Fun(d) climb, 12 more people showed up. They were the Moonlight Madness climbers, and 8 of them, including Tom Dunlap & Dan House, spent that night in the Bogachiel Spruce. So, over the 4 days prior to the 2001 ISA Old Growth & New Technology conference, 25 people made it to the top of that tree. Among the group was a film crew from CBS News, which aired a 9 minute segment on the Sunday Morning show. Their cameraman, Greg Bernstein, was one of the aerial campers, sleeping aloft.
Two visitors were the rangers who were alerted by hikers on a trail construction crew passing under the traverse line stretched over the trail.
The usual federal red tape allowed our permit to cover only the first two days of the climb. We had repeatedly explained for several weeks that the activities would last for four days. The ranger who issued the permit was on vacation during the climb. Maybe someday a comprehensive policy by our public servants can allow citizens to use low impact treeclimbing methods to peacefully recreate out in the woods. It's not fair to make each ranger individually make up a policy, right on the spot, based on his limited knowledge of the goals & methods of treeclimbers in his experience.
You'll be glad you made the effort when you finally ascend one of the big ones. With single rope technique, after you get above the first hundred feet or so, the second hundred feet in a big tree is pretty much like any other 100 footer. You'll want to be comfortable enough on SRT to switch over from ascenders to descender while hanging midline.
I never used Mar-Bars after that climb. A ropewalking system is gelling to the point where it feels comfortable now. There was so much gear on site I felt like a kid in a candy store.
Groups climbing big trees are a true modern 'happening'. The intensity of this dynamic confluence of arborists creates a charged atmosphere of sharing and growth. Each activity takes on a life of its own, reflecting the personalities of the climbers.
Jelte Budding was the Dutch pioneer who first blazed the way to the top of the Bogachiel Spruce. We had just returned from the ISA conference in Milwaukee, where we met on the judging staff of the treeclimbing competition, and were hiking around in the woods, where we by chance encountered it. Jelte did great in last years ITCC in Montreal, by the way.
Dan Kraus (son of treetop camper Mike Kraus) was the third person to climb the BS. Dan also climbed his heart out at the ITCC in Montreal. Here he is in the B Spruce a few months prior to the Tree Fun(d) climb.
There was a mylar pinwheel spinner in the treetop during the Moonlight Madness climb. What you are seeing in the DVD is my shirt coming off in another tree, the Goose Ridge redwood, on an unseasonably hot January day in 2001. Baileys has a poster of the Goose Ridge tree, which is featured on the
"A Tree Story" CD-ROM. A few other trees are seen in short clips on the BS DVD, including Tom Dunlap emerging from between two stems of the 15' dbh Reynolds Triple redwood, also shot by Jerry that same January of 2001. Thanks, Jerry, for leading us on those two back-to-back week-long guided tours that month.
