Newbie climber - how to climb tree with no proper crotches, without using spurs?

Bango Skank said:
Just like how @Mowerr said, then when you got both ends of the rope, pull up a Yosemite bowline or an Alpine Butterfly to choke around the stem. It could be a tiny twig holding the rope up there when setting it, but once choked right, you'll be putting your weight on the stem, the branch won't matter anymore.

You could also keep choking loop runners and stepping in them as you go up with a lanyard. Wouldn't be my first choice, but it's not too hard for short ascents.
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Loop runners also handy technique in the rain on smoothbarks, especially high angle leaders/branches etc
 
For DDRT, use an SRT type canopy anchor with a twist. You need 2 climb lines. Shoot your throwline over any small branch and make sure your line is running in such a way to do and SRT style canopy anchor around the trunk. But, instead of threading the running end of the first line line through the butterfly, run your throwline through a pinto pulley and attached another throw weight to the throwline. Then attached the pulley to the running end of the first line. Then just below that (about 2 trunk circumferences - meaning circumference way up there) tie your butterfly. Now fish all that throwline through the butterfly like normal, and pull everything up. You should have a canopy anchor with a pulley hanging there for use as a false crotch. Now let the throw weight come down own its own through the pulley. Attached your second rope to throwline and pull you're rope up and through pulley. You now have a DDRT false crotch setup using a pinto pulley as a friction saver. Removal is the opposite.

Warning, do not using this blocking down the bole. It is not the right setup for that. However, you climb on it, and even remove limbs.
 
@Verdant I just read down in the posts that you were actually going up the tree to take out the top half. Sorry, thought you were just going up for training/pruning. Dude, you can get some used spikes and a wire core for $250. I let you figure out how to not spike the bottom half.
 
I would echo many of the comments above, particularly about not getting in over your head, and about pruning dose/not letting the client dictate arboricultural standards.

However, since I believe in training by doing things outside one's current skillset, and because I didn't listen to the old bulls' good advice when I started, and because I faked it til I made it (my first removal on spikes was a 65' maple with a nearly equal spread, 28" dbh, right next to an above ground pool, on a trial day with a new company. I started the day trying to put my spikes on the wrong feet, gaffs on the outside.), and finally because I expect that the OP is going to try to do this tree anyway, if he hasn't already, here's my advice:

Enter the tree low, by ladder, the roof, by setting your line with a polesaw, or some combination of those three, or with a throwline low down, at a branch union that will hold you.

Advance your tie in point using the alternate lanyard technique, as described in the tree climber's companion: climb to your TIP, and then install your lanyard either in that same union, or one adjacent. Transfer your weight to your lanyard. If doing so is going to hang you out in space, reposition your lanyard to your lower dees or your bridge before transferring your weight to it, or prepare for discomfort. Once your weight is in your lanyard, and you've verified it's safe, remove your climbing line from the your current TIP, and advance it to a higher union, either by tossing or using a polesaw. When you install your line in the higher union, take heed of the advice of previous posters, and install it around the parent stem or trunk, and above the branch. This is always good practice, but it will allow you to (relatively) safely climb out of a union where the parent stem is large enough to support you, but the branch is not.

Once you have advanced your climbing line, transfer your weight to it, remove your lanyard if necessary, and climb to your new TIP. Rinse and repeat until you have attained your final TIP. It is not always necessary to advance using your climbing line if there is an appropriate union within reach of your lanyard, but if nothing is, you'll have to secure your position with your lanyard and advance with your climbing line. You should always try to climb the tree rather than the rope if possible, as it is usually faster if you don't already have a high point. A great video of this technique is at
. He doesn't cover advancing with a pole, but it's covered in the tree climber's companion. Basically, you tie a figure eight or nine on a bight or a monkey's fist in the terminal end of your line, feed out enough slack, and then push the knot through the union with the hook of the pole saw, and then pull the knot back to you with the hook. Untie the knot, clip back in, tend the slack, secure the pole, and resume climbing. With a 12' pole, you should be able to advance 14' or more.

Advancing your line by toss or pole is literally the fundamental skill of tree climbing. You have no business setting SRT/SRS anchors, cinching your climbing line, using spikes, or alternating webbing footholds, or throwing a throwline into the upper canopy, until you have mastered this skill. There are plenty of appropriate unions in that tree to get to the top, if you advance this way. You get a close inspection of each TIP before committing to it. It is simple, safe, requires nothing but climbing gear and perhaps a polesaw, and is frequently faster and more efficient than more advanced techniques, including throwlines. And, I will bet my next paycheck that if you can't access the tree using this technique, you will also not be able to successfully perform what I will generously call the "retrenchment pruning" called for in your scope of work.

***

Before I'm accused of being a Luddite, I climb SRS 75+% of the time and use a throwline every day, frequently with a big shot. I dance my fat ass out in the tips. We're not talking about me, we're talking about a novice.

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All good stuff above about climbing the tree. But, get some spikes if you're going to be be blocking down. Using webbing slings around that slick bark for foot loops can be done, just make sure you get your slings long enough to do multiple wraps, like a schwabisch or similar. If you use a simple one wrap girth hitch and the foot loop slips down while that saw is running it could be really ugly. Just think about where that saw is during a blocking cut. Good luck.
 
climbingmonkey24 said:
I still remember when I first started climbing I decided I would start doing tree work. Put an ad out, got some calls. Went to one job, went up the tree and kind of froze because I was unsure of what to do. How to get out to the branches I needed to cut, etc. Used the excuse that I needed spurs and left and came back another day. Still wasn't able to get it. It wasn't that it was impossible it was that I didn't have the experience. So that was the end of that. Wasted my time and didn't make anything and I dropped my chainsaw and broke the bar.
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First, thanks for posting that experience. Second, this is pretty much the token aspect of our profession that is holding us back. Go buy a chainsaw and bam you're a professional arborist . No regulation, no license or proof of competency required. I lost quite a few jobs because the homeowners had a really bad experience with the last tree guy they hired. Some jobs I got begrudgingly from the owners because it was absolutely necessary to get something done but they were still bitter about the last guy that jerked them around. Some folks I was able to win back over, only after they saw me do the work and they realized I actually knew what I was doing.

To the OP: Knowing how to get in the tree is only part of the battle. As has been mentioned, you need to know how to deal with tons of different scenarios that might arise while actually working. If you need to ask the question, "how do you get in this tree?" Or "what do you mean a running bowline?". You should not be working this tree without someone on site that knows how to do this stuff. But since I know how this goes, please be safe and recognize if you get into a scenario that your gut tells you is not good and walk away.
 
Phil said:
Go buy a chainsaw and bam you're a professional arborist . No regulation, no license or proof of competency required.
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I wondered where you going when you mentioned this holding the profession back, but I see, and it makes sense.

However, why 'require' anything? Why not just have a certification that one can obtain and use as a marketing tool, kind of like the various ISO certifications? The guys with chainsaws that want to take a chance ruining their own reputations and future business prospects by mucking up any given job are still free to do so, you have a great competitive advantage against those guys (and a great marketing tool in the cert. itself), and customers now have 'tiers' of service they can select from, with the trade-off being monetary cost vs. risk, and they can select whichever they want to stomach.

Edit: Also, use the various quality-of-service tools available online (BBB, Yelp!, Angie's List, etc., etc., etc.) - what a time to be alive, with regards to the massive numbers of people that your hopefully good reputation can be placed in front of, via the internet! Whenever a business doesn't have a presence on any of the various platforms like those, in which some sort of history and reputation can be pieced together through customer feedback, the customer is taking a risk. And, if the pricing is adjusted accordingly, these services lacking public customer feedback ought to be less expensive. Winning, for the customers!
 
LordFarkwad said:
I wondered where you going when you mentioned this holding the profession back, but I see, and it makes sense.

However, why 'require' anything? Why not just have a certification that one can obtain and use as a marketing tool, kind of like the various ISO certifications? The guys with chainsaws that want to take a chance ruining their own reputations and future business prospects by mucking up any given job are still free to do so, you have a great competitive advantage against those guys (and a great marketing tool in the cert. itself), and customers now have 'tiers' of service they can select from, with the trade-off being monetary cost vs. risk, and they can select whichever they want to stomach.

Edit: Also, use the various quality-of-service tools available online (BBB, Yelp!, Angie's List, etc., etc., etc.) - what a time to be alive, with regards to the massive numbers of people that your hopefully good reputation can be placed in front of, via the internet! Whenever a business doesn't have a presence on any of the various platforms like those, in which some sort of history and reputation can be pieced together through customer feedback, the customer is taking a risk. And, if the pricing is adjusted accordingly, these services lacking public customer feedback ought to be less expensive. Winning, for the customers!
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Many certified guys do just that and will put their name and cert num in their advertising. But when a state doesn't require you to have this cert and or a license then any scam artist can hack chit up and in the end their driving prices down, scaring customers etc.
When I was young and worked with some hacks and just didn't know my ass from my elbow I thought NY was great for not requiring licence but now I wish they would bc it's really bad here upstate man.
Don't get me wrong there are many guys that don't have any certs out there that do really good honest work
 
Mowerr said:
Many certified guys do just that and will put their name and cert num in their advertising. But when a state doesn't require you to have this cert and or a license then any scam artist can hack chit up and in the end their driving prices down, scaring customers etc.
When I was young and worked with some hacks and just didn't know my ass from my elbow I thought NY was great for not requiring licence but now I wish they would bc it's really bad here upstate man.
Don't get me wrong there are many guys that don't have any certs out there that do really good honest work
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Man, that does suck - it's a real shame that there are people out there who, motivated by dishonest gain, will outright lie about their experience/credentials and then allow an unknowing/mislead customer to shoulder such risk.

Surely, with the plethora of laws that exist, there's one that legally excludes someone from being able to advertise their business by saying they have 'X' certification, when in reality they do not possess that certification.

I guess my approach then is to put the responsibility on the customer to do their homework prior to allowing all of these dangerous activities to be done on their property by a total and complete stranger. Online reviews, word-of-mouth, checking the certs the guy says he has, etc., etc. If they're not willing to take the time to do that with the stakes being so high, I'm not 100% sure that in all such cases I would be moved by pity (however, I could be wrong - there conceivably could be a circumstance where someone who was able to hire someone to do work but was not able for some reason to do prior research).

I've read on here, at least 4 or 5 times, folks mention that they let the customer go with the lower bidder, then come back and fix the screw-up later, after the customer receives their expensive lesson. That seems like some of the best ad copy you could generate...and it's free!
 
LordFarkwad said:
Man, that does suck - it's a real shame that there are people out there who, motivated by dishonest gain, will outright lie about their experience/credentials and then allow an unknowing/mislead customer to shoulder such risk.

Surely, with the plethora of laws that exist, there's one that legally excludes someone from being able to advertise their business by saying they have 'X' certification, when in reality they do not possess that certification.

I guess my approach then is to put the responsibility on the customer to do their homework prior to allowing all of these dangerous activities to be done on their property by a total and complete stranger. Online reviews, word-of-mouth, checking the certs the guy says he has, etc., etc. If they're not willing to take the time to do that with the stakes being so high, I'm not 100% sure that in all such cases I would be moved by pity (however, I could be wrong - there conceivably could be a circumstance where someone who was able to hire someone to do work but was not able for some reason to do prior research).

I've read on here, at least 4 or 5 times, folks mention that they let the customer go with the lower bidder, then come back and fix the screw-up later, after the customer receives their expensive lesson. That seems like some of the best ad copy you could generate...and it's free!
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yea most guys up here push their customers into removing everything in their yard by basically giving a good deal. Over and over again customers will be looking to trim up all their trees but these guys will convince them that the trees gotta go and give them a way better deal than the trim job would cost.
I used to haTe trim jobs and it wasn't till I did the research and educated myself on pruning and started doing them at my house and my family and friends trees mostly for free because I just wanted to apply the techniques id read about on trees that I could be around or revisit often to see how the trees respond to my work. Now I love pruning and helping the trees grow. im becoming almost ocd about it.
I really think those hacks I worked with just didn't care or bother to educate themselves more because they were literally all about the money. those guys are big outfits too, they look legit, they don't claim to be certified but they really only want removals and they don't pass off any trim jobs to smaller guys... they just have their ways of convincing people that all these things gotta go.
 
around here at least, it seems, both customer and hack need to educate themselves. sure the cost of living is really high here but theres guys doing it the right way all over the world and somehow their doing allright without having to operate like that.
 
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