usfs treeclimbing guide

Y

Yoav

Location
Hobart, Tasmania, Australia
Some questions....might save me heaps of trouble.

Does anybody have that link to the US Forest Service treeclimbing guide pdf? I cant seem to find it! I think Tom posted it half a year ago.

I'm also anticipating a return to the USA after a few years at the end of the planet. I'd like to try some seed collecting work in the west coast. Has anybody had any experience with getting involved in that scene, or know anything about the USFS treeclimbing certifications? Is anybody actually even sitting on any proper certifications?

Here in Australia there is a chainsaw license that you need for commercial chainsaw work, but I don't think the same exists for climbing on ropes.

y
 
Hello, Yoav. I am intimately familiar with the USFS Guide, both as a climber and as an author and editor. The USFS National Treeclimbing program website is: http://www.fs.fed.us/treeclimbing/ Look in the policy section for the Guide pdf files.

It might be interesting to you and others that this Guide was initially developed in the Pacific NW region, and focused soley on conifer climbing, and almost exclusively on cone harvesting. Much of the earliest edition was written in the early 1970's. As the types of work done by FS climbers expanded over the decades, the Guide began to reflect that. I began my involvement with FS climbing in 1983, and with writing/editing for the Guide in 2000. That was the year that the FS took the PNW regional tree climbing training and certification program (which includes the Guide) nation-wide. We are still catching up (and are mostly there, I think, though there will always be better information to include) on addressing in the Guide the huge variety of climbing techniques and styles out there nation-wide.

If you decide to download the Guide, make sure you also fetch the "proposed changes" documents as well. There have been significant revisions made in 2002, 2003, and now in 2004. The '04 changes are not posted on the site as we are hopeful about our chances to get a new electronic version with all changes incorporated soon. That will be up on the website as soon as it is available. It is a real bother to manually collate the changes into the Guide...you will want to use a color printer for this as deletions, additions, etc. are color coded. I hate to say that you should wait until the revised edition is available, as we've been waiting a long time for it already and I am not at all certain when it will arrive, but it will be much easier to use when that happens.

Let me know what your questions are regarding cone picking and anything else and I'll try to answer them. I will be off the net after today until next week, but I'll get back to you as soon as I can then.
 
Burnham- Thanks for the great link. I am currently going over the website. It seems to be directed to people who are WORKING for one reason or another in the forests.

Any policies for those who want to climb recreationally?

love
nick
 
Thanks for the quick response!
I'll look into it, and be in touch.

Nice to have an official text on-line.
Drop that into the directory with the life on a line pdf.

Another question...with all the time members of this board must spend trolling the WWW looking for techie gear, any other good texts worth checking out? ... I know Vertical by Alan Warild is available online as a .pdf.
 
Yeah, Nick, the Guide is an in-house training document, in that it lays out the equipment and techniques that are deemed suitable for US Forest Service employees. Private contractors working on NF lands are not generally required to follow FS policy, though some contracting officers are moving in that direction. Many of the procedures outlined will describe procedures that go beyond ANSI and federal or state OSHA. The purpose is to provide a training aid that will ensure safe practices...and we recognize that we limit innovation that way. Obviously, there are many ways to skin the "climb a tree" cat, and we don't even try to be completely comprehensive, so your favorite friction hitch or rappel device might not be in the Guide. The up side is that there is a national level USFS comittee with the long-winded title of National Tree Climbing Program Technical Advisory Group (TAG for short) that meets annually and continues to evaluate advances in technique and equipment for potential inclusion in the Guide, so it is not a stagnant document. I have the good fortune to have been tasked to serve as a technical advisor (read real tree climber) to this comittee, so I get to play with new toys/knots/techniques as part of the evaluation process.

As far as policies for rec climbers...well, if you mean does the USFS have policies on how rec climbing should be done, yes, but under the very general "minimize damage to the resource" type point of view. If you mean, does the USFS have a single policy regarding rec climbing as an activity on FS lands, that seems to be a "no". Different National Forests have different policies, and in my experience, most have no specific policy at all. This variability is based on differing experiences with rec climbers in the past. Some have created percieved problems some places, and in many other places no conflicts have occured. A major difference does exist if the tree climbing is operated as a profit generating business (read guided services) or it it is a totally private recreational activity. Special use permits are generally required in the case of the former.

One last point. Don't confuse the US Forest Service with any State Forestry agency, or with The US Park Service, or the BLM. While in some cases managers from each of these other organizations have elected to follow USFS giudelines and have sent climbers to USFS training workshops, that is by no means a blanket situation, and the public lands managed by these various agencies are not treated in a uniform manner.
 
As citizens, we have the right to reasonably use the forest for reacreation. The treeclimbing manual can serve as a start to help determine safe and non-invasive methods.

Climbs in old growth trees that require a special use permit can involve time consuming 'consultation' with other agencies, including the Dept. of Fish & Wildlife. Minimizing damage to the resource may involve scheduling the climb sometime other than during the nesting season of animals on the Threatened & Endangered Species List.

The agencies have a duty to protect the character of the lands they administer. Driving a D-9 cat through the forest can be an example of a permitted activity, and uses the same application form that getting a permit to climb a tree does.

If you ever want to hear a good mystery story, take a look at that permit application form that the Forest Services requires. I'd like to see an example of such a form properly filled out for treeclimbing.

When an agency employee, like a Ranger, encounters treeclimbers in the woods, they sometimes must make up policy right there on the spot. Their word goes, and they have the authority to back it up. It would be nice if they had some direction from their head office.
 
Update! For those of you who have taken an interest in the USFS Tree Climbing Guide, you will see a new version on the FS website. This is still a draft, dated July 2004, and is accompanied with a 2004 changes document, but the changes are far less extensive for this edition than those to the 2001 edition, thus easier to collate into the Guide. We still hope to have a fully corrected version out this year...but for now this is an improvement over the earlier situation. Essentially, the changes document itemizes the needed corrections to take the 2004 Guide from draft to final.

The site is
http://www.fs.fed.us/treeclimbing/
Look in the policy section for the Guide in 5 pdf files and 1 corrections pdf file.
 
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