What is safer? Lifts or climbing?

tuttle said:
But free climbing rocks teaches you where your body, back and rear should be to help you move from point to point.
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I gotta agree with this. I don't think rock climbing is a prerequisite for tree climbing, but I agree that you can learn a lot of useful stuff about the geometry of your own body parts, and how to get them from one point to another. The coordination and balance you learn on the rock eases the transition to wood. The most graceful tree climber I ever met was a rock climber who liked big wall climbing. He had amazing stamina, too.
 
I climbed a rock faced wall everyday, 10 times a day for 12yrs, it was a seawall and I needed to get to the shop and get the takings from my businesses, some people looked shocked when I did it in 3 seconds with just 3 moves.

Life offers lots of experience, it's not just trees folks.
 
When I hung up the spikes for pruning...yeah, back in the Evil Tom days...and started climbing the tree I took rock and ice climbing lessons from a skiing buddy. In the classes I learned a lot about movement and The Dance. For me there was a lot about movement on rock, and especially ice, that made me a better tree climber.

Using my bones more than my puny muscles left me with more energy at the end of the day. Too often tree climbers use more muscle than necessary and less grace.
 
When ever anyone asks if climbing (any kind) is hard? I ask," do you think climbing a ladder is hard?" On of my tree buddies, that only tree climbed would get upset when I would say that to people...he wanted people to think what he did was for super heros...when I brought him ice climbing the first time, he tried to do pull ups the whole route, was not till his arms about failed did he realize how to stand on his feet. Legs are a bit stronger then the arms bud!

When I turned 16 my best friend and I bought motorcycles and rock climbing gear, and proceeded to scare the poop out of ourselves and families. I've been blessed with a well rounded life of climbing. All types of rock, ice, alpine (mixed), rescue ( gondola and chair lift) and the full circle came with tree climbing and rigging.

Having a diverse climbing back ground propelled my skills past the guys who taught me tree climbing...just saying
 
I started with rock climbing as the rationale to become a climber. It taught the body position, the 3 points concept and how to move with less energy. The big difference for me is the use of the rope. In rock climbing it's mostly a back up whereas for us it's integral to the climb.

Frashdog, if you go to my previous post, I embedded links that will take you to the breakdown of the numbers. What I didn't copy into the second post was the electrocution numbers. Those were separate from those I actually posted.
 
I also came into tree work from rock climbing. I guess what I've seen is that while rock climbing can be a valuable primer for tree climbers in terms of body positioning, there are a lot of short cuts that most climbers take that are not acceptable in a work environment. Often the better climbers have an ego that gets in the way of taking suggestions. I say that because not only have I seen it, I was one of them at the beginning of my career. Hell. Maybe I've just spent to much time around dirtbags.
 
Ego, that is a big obstacle for plenty. Definitely, rock climbing is only a primer and anyone who thinks that it's substitute training is fooling themselves.
 
Usually if we rent a lift for me to use there is a reason. Like a manitoba maple rotten base big cavities and its main limb was buckled and it's sprouts from previous topping were half dead. Lifts are tools used properly they do help.
 
Let's remember the guys who are no longer with us. I almost cried at the ISAO when I heard talks of falls and people who knew and saw people who died climbing. The majority of the room knew people who died working in the industry. In Ontario we have roughly a fatality or two a year on average. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I've heard of more climber fatalities. The other thing to factor into this is how many man hours are spent climbing vs in a bucket in a given area over a given time. I would guess lots of near misses either way. I should say that I'm a climber and plan no bucket any time soon. Maybe a spider lift but again no time soon. Not a cost thing just love climbing. But I'm a climber who supports the idea of buckets, as much as Ive poked fun at them. Remember those people who fell every time you climb and say to yourself 'I'm going to climb successfully and safely and come home to my kids'. Ten years ago I had one near miss up a tree when flopping a top at forty feet up. I hadn't doubled around the landyard and kicked up and landed stomach on the cut. Really stupid of me I know. Some of those guys who fell were climbing much safer than I was. I just got lucky to make it through my earlier years alive AND intact. I also had one struck by on the ground while felling. A near miss in that it was a big piece and if any bigger would have broke my pelvis.
Love the look of the tree-mek Gerasimek. How can you get any safer than that. No man in a basket, no man in a bucket, no man in a tree. Awesome, awesome. Ideal I imagine to rough in any heavy retrenchment work. And beats the hell out of a pole chainsaw out of a tree. I've done that twice in fourteen years for only very specific purposes. I'll post it in that thread.
I'm not meaning to forget anyone we lost in a bucket.
Does anyone know of this happening?


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Redtree said:
Let's remember the guys who are no longer with us. I almost cried at the ISAO when I heard talks of falls and people who knew and saw people who died climbing. The majority of the room knew people who died working in the industry. In Ontario we have roughly a fatality or two a year on average. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I've heard of more climber fatalities. The other thing to factor into this is how many man hours are spent climbing vs in a bucket in a given area over a given time. I would guess lots of near misses either way. I should say that I'm a climber and plan no bucket any time soon. Maybe a spider lift but again no time soon. Not a cost thing just love climbing. But I'm a climber who supports the idea of buckets, as much as Ive poked fun at them. Remember those people who fell every time you climb and say to yourself 'I'm going to climb successfully and safely and come home to my kids'. Ten years ago I had one near miss up a tree when flopping a top at forty feet up. I hadn't doubled around the landyard and kicked up and landed stomach on the cut. Really stupid of me I know. Some of those guys who fell were climbing much safer than I was. I just got lucky to make it through my earlier years alive AND intact. I also had one struck by on the ground while felling. A near miss in that it was a big piece and if any bigger would have broke my pelvis.
Love the look of the tree-mek Gerasimek. How can you get any safer than that. No man in a basket, no man in a bucket, no man in a tree. Awesome, awesome. Ideal I imagine to rough in any heavy retrenchment work. And beats the hell out of a pole chainsaw out of a tree. I've done that twice in fourteen years for only very specific purposes. I'll post it in that thread.
I'm not meaning to forget anyone we lost in a bucket.
Does anyone know of this happening?


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
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Red good points. This week at different talks I heard a lot of people say that accidents and near misses aren't talked about enough throughout our industry. Not just the horror stories but the accident, the cause and the remedial actions taken afterwards to hopefully prevent the same problem from happening again. Especially close calls we can sometimes hide them instead of using them as a learning/ teaching tool.

So my goal this year is to come up with a platform just like the 'awakening' thread within our chapter with the goal of better documentation as well as giving the h&s reps a chance to go back and forth with out bogging down the employer. Though more open dialogue hopefully it will inspire even the small companies to have h&s programs equal to the big guys like Bartlett, etc. Once this gets going I hope to ad to awakening and get h&s just as popular as rigging instead of being an extra or a side topic
 
Take a look at Worksafe BC they do some good analysis and publication of the findings. I spoke with an OSHA rep at the last NJISA conference and they state the problem is privacy and litigation. Of course, this is the US. Glad to hear this is being talked about. I'll raise the point again at the upcoming conference.
 
treehumper said:
Take a look at Worksafe BC they do some good analysis and publication of the findings. I spoke with an OSHA rep at the last NJISA conference and they state the problem is privacy and litigation. Of course, this is the US. Glad to hear this is being talked about. I'll raise the point again at the upcoming conference.
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We just talked about the same things and our Canadian Ministry of Labour can't talk about anything until they put out there full report, 1 year minus 1 day, from the accident. Then you have to go digging to find it.
My goal is to get regular monthly submission for our local members and send it out even close calls.
It should make this information easier to find, local and current.
We had a lot of people saying that they really want this kind of thing from isa or the ministry of labour but those 2 parties said there is privacy laws, etc that prevent them from doing anything like that and it has to be industry based and driven.
The ministry and every safety organization that we talk to have been jumping up and down yelling document, document, document! They find that hydro and utility workers do fairly good at this and the big companies with SOPs do ok but a lot of the small companies in the private residential/ commercial sector is where the ball gets dropped the most.
I've been networking with people in my chapter big and small companies and I'm trying to take what the big companies have and see if even just in our chapter we can have an easy to follow standard reporting system for accidents, close calls, etc. So opening the dialogue throughout our chapter and trying to get h&s reps to step up to get better programs running is what we as a group are saying we want.
So I'm hoping that by getting the ball rolling good things will come of it. Everyone looks at the new toys, crazy rigging, srt, etc. but h&s can be a parallel program to the productivity mind set but we want those to be intermingled better.

But I think I've ate up enough of this thread I should start a new one if people are willing to share there policies to get ideas in place for new owners, workers, etc. I should also say that the awakening thread on here is a great tool for this as well but it often only covers, parts 1 and sometimes part 2 but rarely part 3. But that's for my next thread.
 
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