Royce, you lucky devil! I spent a few days there last September; visited Hamilton Bot Gdn, where Wintec does their training--best in the world imo.
Mt. Whakapapa (honest) had some super skiing, too
i'll copy you on a note to a guy with a biigggg company over there. Here's a look at a kiwi:
She glides through the air, with the greatest of ease.
This agile young lass found a home in the trees.
2011 International Tree Climbing Women’s Champion Chrissy Spence entered the workforce at age 15, but no job suited her for more than a year. Installing windscreens (that’s windshields to us yanks) looked like another boring dead-end duty, so when her brother-in-law Rick Mexted kept after her to try joining his arborist crew, she finally tried it. “Few chicks did it” she told me in the hallway after claiming her trophy in Parramatta “so I thought I would give it a go. At first the idea seemed strange—people paying me money to climb trees—sounded pretty cool!”
“As a kid I was scared of heights, but with the right gear and support I soon got over that. I hired on with a company called Treescape, and stayed on two years. They gave me great training, and it was natural fitting in with their crews. Men in New Zealand were very supportive of women doing this work. Once I knew what I was doing up there, I decided to sell my skills overseas. Australia for a year, Germany for a year, I was always watching, always learning new tricks. Berndt Strasser’s style was especially instructive—the way he felt the tree with his mind, the way he used both sides of his body to move about the crown; I learned so much from him!”
Indeed, Chrissy’s way of sizing up and traversing the empty space between limbs, the way she can glide as smoothly as a flying squirrel, remind viewers of ITCC competitions of the legendary Beddes. “I love the competition, and the social aspect of the climbing community. Great friends, lots of laughs. Working at heights gives me an entirely different perspective of the world below. The whole job is so cool—I’ve learned to trust in myself and in what I have learned from others.” Her favorite species? “I like them all” she told me. “Oaks are cool—so very strong.”
The work climb is Chrissy’s favorite event in competition, because it is most similar to what happens every day on the job. “Swinging around is the greatest feeling—the weightlessness, the breeze, the safe landing on the next branch. The people are great, and the atmosphere is so supportive of all.” And what is the life goal of this dynamic yound woman? “My aim is fun” she smiles. “I want to enjoy life, and take opportunities as they come. I come from the North Island of New Zealand, but I’m ready to go anywhere I can learn and improve myself.”
As she spoke, the monitor down the hallway hanging from the ceiling showed an active volcano, with a crew of professional climbers safely setting ropes and platforms and lowering geologists and their gear into the steaming gas above the bubbling lava. The same climbers were watching, laughing and pointing as they relived the experience. Chrissy laughed with them,. The gleam in her eye showed she and her climbing skills were ready to take on any challenge on, or in, earth.
After the ISA conference, she traveled north to Queensland to take part in the first International Arbor Camp with her extended family of aerial arborists. She was given the honor of going first, along with ITCC footlocking champion James Kilpatrick, in the the first ever Tree Removal Competition. Chrissy demonstrated smart ergonomics, spiking three steps at a time to balance the impact equally on both sides of her body. Both climbers and their crews safely controlled the limbs of the slash pine Pinus elliottii as they were lowered, but the contrast between her method of removing trunk sections and Kilpatrick’s was compelling.
James chose to rope down sections three meters (9 feet) and longer, using wing cuts to fashion hinges that aimed the sections right where he wanted them to go. Chrissy chose to slice smaller sections, and chuck them into the small opening below. Her timing was impeccable as she lifted and pushed the logs at the precise moment in their arc of movement when their weight was the least and her ability to direct them was optimal. However, it is not always possible to get chunks to rotate the right way, and there is no way a climber can control the lay of the land.
One chunk came off with a twist and bounced backward, brushing the target and costing points. She may have blown away the ITCC competition by thirty points, but this competion was brand new. Chrissy gazed carefully, nodded, and carried out the rest of the removal in good form. Lesson learned, moving on.
