No MN TCC this year?

T

tophopper

As of yet, there has been no mention in our state for TCC this year. Last year it was held in September and it was one of our best events ever.
I believe this year a new person is chairing the committee and must of fell asleep at the wheel. Unless they throw together a last minute comp we are running short on time.
 
I talked with Gary Albig a couple of weeks ago. Gary did a fine job as chair for the last few comps. It's too bad that he wasn't treated with the respect he deserves. Giving up many hours of time and then getting abused is pretty poor pay.

the Exec. Com. was supposed to find someone to run the show. The person who said that would, didn't. It's really too bad. There was a lot of work put into getting the comp in the fall. Now that they'll go back to a spring comp it means no oak climbing. That is a real shame.
 
Tom,

Why no oak climbing in the spring??? We use them here in the MW every yr. The 2 yrs in topeka ks, all the trees were oaks. Although we do ours in June, thats pretty close to spring.
 
Tom can answer with more authority than I but I believe it is due to the potential of spreading Oak Wilt. I believe any fresh wounds are potential openings for the Wilt.
 
It is because of Oak Wilt.
Here in MN, we do not touch oaks trees in the spring (April, May and June), because the oak wilt fungus is highly active at this time. Any injury made to an oak during these months can be a potential entrance point for the fungus carried by the picnic beetle. Once you get into July, Aug, and Sept the risk is lower but it is standard practice here to only prune oaks during dormancy.
I will start pruning Oaks for my clients no sooner than mid October and will prune right thru until April 1st.

So this does put a bit of a crimp on the availabilty of trees to use for such events like TCC during the spring. A few years back we held our first fall event and it was a treat to be able to compete in huge Oaks.

Now if we dont have a TCC this fall, we'll be forced to have one in spring if we want to send a rep to the Internationals next summer.

Ive always said we should have one in January (just once), competing in the TCC when it maybe 5 degrees outside /forum/images/graemlins/grin.gif thats how you seperate the men from the boys /forum/images/graemlins/grin.gif I doubt it will ever happen though /forum/images/graemlins/smirk.gif
 
So Im guessing OakWilt is a problem in Minn? We dont have any here and prune our oaks yr round.

As for climbing in Jan, that truly sounds like a 'Master's Challenge'. Since your so in favor of it, why don't you organize it??? With that date on the calendar, there may not be as much work involved. Maybe get away w/ just the Masters Challenge event and call your winner. :)
 
When the decision was made to go to a fall TCC it took a LOT of work. We ran a normal TCC in June and then pre-qualified the top six, is that right John?, to compete in another TCC at the MN State Fair in August. We did a stage-share with a Stihl logging show. They would spike the poles and do some chainsaw hoo-ha and then we would run a competitor. It took all day to run the comp. During the comp we had a problem that lead to a long, divisive, issue. The next year when things were settled, we put together another fall comp in less than thirty days. To give up all of the work to move the TCC to the fall because somebody didn't follow-up on their committment is really disappointing.

Is that wonderful ash still standing at the arboretum? :)

Climb in January? Sounds good to me :) Now all that has to happen is to find umpteen other volunteers to join in. Let me know what comes up John :)

Tom
 
I dont have the time to make a commitment like that. Im spreading myself thin as it is now, and I wouldn't chair that committee unless I could give 100%. Im always available to help out though.

Regarding Oak wilt; yes it is a big problem here. This year DED is extremely bad too
 
I guess I'll give my two cents worth in all of this. The Mn. Tree Climbing Championship was a success in the last two years was only because of one thing. That one thing was a person called Gary Albig. Gary gave so much of himself and his time that everything was truly a success. I was a judge under Garys' auspice and though it was hard to sit through, we went through every paragraph, sentence, and line of the TCC rules.
I would be the last person that I would chose to be a judge of a TCC event, that said, Gary made everything perfectly clear and organized. Not everyone can do this sort of thing...hats off to you Gary, and thanks for bringing back the integrity to the Mn. TCC.
 
You captured the way that I feel about Gary too. He is one of the few people I would follow into a "fire" knowing that he would never take me anywhere we wouldn't come back from successfully. GAry is on my Arborist Mount Rushmore. Going through the judges training was a little rough but it sure made the competition flow smoother, wouldn't you agree? You can bet dollars to dust that if Gary were chairing, the compe would be done now.

Tom
 
I too think that Gary has done a stellar job with the event. He had to deal with some bs from time to time, but in my eyes we have not had more successful events.
Gary is also a great sport, here is a pic of Gary at our CTW exam, we had tied an actual boat anchor on his line as a joke. He took it well, we all had a good laugh /forum/images/graemlins/grin.gif
 

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In regard to oakwilt and DED here in the M.W. In K.c. where i'm at it is a real concern, however further south where okietreedude live it may not be. However, we do share chapter. Our chapters practice to my knowledge is to prune the trees which will be used the previous dormant season. I don't really see it being a big problem w/ climbing them in June even thought this is a bad season to prune. We're using friction savers, thus, little if any wounding to the trees is occurring. I think to disallow the climbing of these trees at all would be silly. If the organizers of the event got busy early enough this should never be a problem. As far as i know; for next year, they had the park and possible trees already being picked out by the time last years comp was over.
 
Well we'd probably be safe in oaks during spring, most likely wed be using burs ors whites anyway so the actual risk of infection is very low. However, being run by the states arboriculture society it would be best to avoid this IMO. The reason I say this is because of image, we as pros tell all the public to avoid pruning at this time in any oak. We would look like hipocrits if we claimed it OK to play in oaks during that time. Besides in TCC events there is strong likely hood of limb breakage, that looks bad enough to the public, then add to the equation that its an oak tree and it is high risk time for disease.
To sum up, I agree it would probably be fine, but as professionals its not the kind of message we should be sending.
would't you agree?
 
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