How many feet do you climb in a day?

[Dan Cobb]

The thread on bicep fatigue made me wonder how much rope people climb in a day. I'm sure it varies wildly depending on species, type of work, etc.

I tend to work on hardwoods mostly, but, working solo, I may do a lot of up and down. Still, I think it would be rare for me to do over 300 ft of vertical in a day, in trees.

In caving, 874 feet is the most rope I've climbed during a single outing. I don't think I'll surpass that doing tree work.

 

[Treeaddict]

Interesting to think about. Too bad friction devices don’t have integrated odometers.
The Iphone is able to calculate steps through elevation changes by reading barometric pressure I believe. The phone could probably tell you by using that feature

 

[Mick Dempsey]

I bet most window cleaners would knock tree climbers into a cocked hat in that respect.

 

[Neill]

about 150 with ascenders and another 100 on spurs today

 

[Vicente]

I bet most window cleaners would knock tree climbers into a cocked hat in that respect.

Most of the guys doing rope access are going to be working top down with window cleaning, I used to do lots of residential you work down so you don't drip on the clean windows below you.

 

[Vicente]

Mine could be as little as 50 or a little more ft in a full day if it's a shorter but complicated tree up to probably 3 or 400 on the higher side of normal but even that is rare.

 

[evo]

Max was about 600’, a big day is typically 300’. Normal climbing days is 50’-200’, but more and more my feet are on the ground.
It’s nothing to do 15-20 50’ conifer crown raises or deadwooding in a day. But those jobs are running up a 20-25’ extension ladder, throw a flipline around the trunk, stand on top of the vertical rails and toss your rope high as possible and progress your way another 20-30’. Soon as your feet leave the ladder, groundie moves it to the next tree (or climbers alternate).

 

[27RMT0N]

Similar. I'll do over 600' of spur removals in a day on site clearing jobs, that's usually going up around 50-80' and taking the top, then logs on the way down. Many jobs I'm only addressing 1-3 trees, so that just depends on the size. Often some felling as well, which isn't tree climbing, but a lot of slope scrambling. On jobs where it's just a 'low' deadwood prune, that could be like 30-80 feet up, most of those jobs involve a few trees.

 

[Tom Dunlap]

I bought a mountaineering ‘watch’ that records time and altitude along with several other features. It was useful for navigating because it made graphs that could be compared to topo maps for routinng

I’m sure it would be easy to use it to record a day of tree climbing, even pruning where there is a lot of yo yo movement. The data points could be adjusted by time. Set it to a short interval and it holds the height data.

I wonder if that watch is still around

 

[Reach]

I bought a mountaineering ‘watch’ that records time and altitude along with several other features. It was useful for navigating because it made graphs that could be compared to topo maps for routinng

I’m sure it would be easy to use it to record a day of tree climbing, even pruning where there is a lot of yo yo movement. The data points could be adjusted by time. Set it to a short interval and it holds the height data.

I wonder if that watch is still around

That’s not a Suunto, is it? My aunt had one back when she climbed mountains. Hers had a breadcrumb tracker too, but not a true GPS.

 

[Tom Dunlap]

I don’t remember the brand

Shortly after I bought it I moved from Colorado to flatter places so I haven’t used it

 

[theatertech87]

I bought a mountaineering ‘watch’ that records time and altitude along with several other features. It was useful for navigating because it made graphs that could be compared to topo maps for routinng

I’m sure it would be easy to use it to record a day of tree climbing, even pruning where there is a lot of yo yo movement. The data points could be adjusted by time. Set it to a short interval and it holds the height data.

I wonder if that watch is still around

A lot of guys I used to work with had fitbits and watches with "altimeters" but they either weren't sensetive enough to get real elevation changes in the 5-10 foot range and missed a lot of data... OR they were motion activated step counters, and things like flaking rope would add hundreds of stair steps to the tally

That being said, when we were doing line clearance, we figured the experienced climbers would average around 30x 40-50ft spike climbs a day so somewhere in the 1000-200 feet a day range. Residential was substaintally less, and now
owning a wraptor, anything more than about 40 feet gets motored up

 

[Rusticus]

A lot of guys I used to work with had fitbits and watches with "altimeters" but they either weren't sensetive enough to get real elevation changes in the 5-10 foot range and missed a lot of data... OR they were motion activated step counters, and things like flaking rope would add hundreds of stair steps to the tally

That being said, when we were doing line clearance, we figured the experienced climbers would average around 30x 40-50ft spike climbs a day so somewhere in the 1000-200 feet a day range. Residential was substaintally less, and now
owning a wraptor, anything more than about 40 feet gets motored up

Wow. I thought I was booking it doing 13 srt climbs a day to about 30' last week.