let me make one thing clear before i get bashed about spike climbing a palm. palms are not the same as trees. they do not have the ill effects that trees get from spiking. you cause more damage to pruning a tree then you do spiking up a palm stem.
on to the other reason for spike climbing palms.
when you have 30 palms to do in one day and do it on a regular basis, there is no way in hell you'd get it done with setting an SRT line every palm. no one NO ONE here pays over $100 per palm. because they make soo little and create ALLOT of work for you and the ground guys you need to work fast. luckly most of the palms at the resorts are well maintained so every 6 month visits are easy but when you get palms that have not been cleaned for years and are full of crap, it is more work then just cutting a few low hanging fronds off. you need to take out all the flower pods, fronds growing lower then the 10:00 and 2:00 positions, any un opened seed pods, tear off all the old rotten and brown boots from previously removed fronds. sometimes they give with just a tug, other times you need to cut them with your hand saw. palms clog your handsaw pretty bad when cutting the fronds and seed pod stems.
anyway, long story short. i have been climbing and trimming palms for longer then i have been doing trees and i have been doing them since i was 16 for my uncle noah's landscaping company here on the islands. that being said, unless you have been doing palms for years, i dont wanna hear about spike climbing palms being a shocker to you. i could see climbing a tree with spikes being of huge concern and a miss practice but ask anyone who trims palms for a living. they will tell you how grinding and messy the work is. spiking is safer and faster.
