World-class tree climbing
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Maybe you climbed trees when you were a kid, in the way that kids
climb trees. Just walked right on up to 'em and then started climbing
the thing directly, with your hands and feet. Maybe you think this
post is going to be about that kind of tree climbing. Maybe you're
going to read about people who can do it really fast, or about some
place that's full of really good trees for it, with nice views.
Think again, chump. You're going to read a story which will change
your personal definition of tree climbing. We're talking serious
business.
But let's back up a bit.
It won't come as a surprise to anybody who knows about this kind of
thing to hear that I am somewhere between a fan and a blind disciple
of Grant Petersen, cycling's favourite crank and the original
inspiration for the term "retrogrouch" which I have happily
appropriated to describe myself in several contexts both
cycling-related and non-.
(I promise this is not a cycling post disguised as an epic tree
climbing post. Hang in there.)
One of my favourite things to read in the world is the Rivendell
Reader, the newsletter put out by Grant's company Rivendell Bicycle
Works. Once upon a time this was a physical paper-on-ink deal sent to
your house via mail that you could subscribe to anymore. I don't
think they do that anymore, the economics weren't working out for
them. I think you can request printed copies for free to be included
in your order when you buy an actual physical product of sufficient
value, I don't remember. Not living in the US this is all kind of
moot to me. But if you know where to look, they're all online. They
are chock full of informative, thought-provoking, educational and
amusing content, both cycling related and otherwise.
Many Riv Readers have interviews in them, with people from the cycling
industry. The interviews are obviously cycling-centric, but they can
and do wander all over the place. RR27 has an interview with Charlie
Cunningham, one of the pioneers of mountain biking and co-founder of
Wilderness Trail Bikes (WTB). There's an incredible story in there,
and it's the subject of this post. I've included the whole thing
below, verbatim, except that in a shocking act of cultural imperialism
I've converted all the measurements into metric. You're welcome.
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Grant: On our ride you mentioned climbing trees, and I heard from a
mutual friend that you once climbed something like the world’s
tallest tree. I don’t remember if it WAS the world’s tallest or not
(isn’t that a tree named General Sherman? A giant sequoia down
south of here near the coast?) But what’s that all about, anyway?
Charlie: In my college days, two friends and me were doing a lot
of rock climbing, caving and mine exploring on desert trips.
To keep things interesting here in Marin, we started climbing
trees. After climbing some big oaks, firs and such we got the
idea to climb the tallest tree in the world. I researched it at
the library and found it is on Redwood Creek near the town of
Orick, in northern California. As I recall, it’s about 10 metres
in diameter and 112 metres tall! (General Sherman is the biggest
tree, not the tallest.) The lowest branches don’t even start
until more than 50 metres up, so to climb it, we had to find a
way to reach the lowest branches, and we didn’t want to hurt the
tree while doing it. We tried the usual ideas like a bow and arrow
with a cord, but they didn’t work, so after fiddling around, we
ended up with a propane-oxygen cannon made from a scuba tank with
a removable aluminum barrel and tripod, and a spark plug in the end
with a piezo electric trigger. It could lob a 1.8 kg slug 122 metres
up with a cord attached. We perfected our climbing technique on
some big local redwoods to prepare for the giant in Orick. Using
the cannon to place the cord over our branch of choice, we then
pulled the climbing rope into place with the cord.
We planned to make what we figured would be the first ascent of
the tallest tree over Easter vacation. Just days before leaving,
we learned that a local professional tree surgeon had discovered
our plans. In a competitive spirit, he attempted the climb first,
but failed because his standard climbing harness didn’t work on
such a huge tree. On Easter day, we arrived at the Redwood Creek
trailhead and began our march up the trail with a great heap of ropes
and gear. We underestimated the time needed, and got to the tree late
in the day. Our feet were sore, and we didn’t have overnight gear.
The tree was huge, and it took till late in the day to even get
a marginal rope placement, 60 metres up and too far out on the
lowest branch. We were out of time and propane and had to make
it work. We drew straws to decide who would climb the dangerous
placement with jumar ascenders, and re-secure the rope. Scott lost,
so up he went. Fortunately he’s a feather-weight and survived. He
improved the rope and we joined him. That was the easy part. We
discovered the monstrous lowest branches are far apart, making
climbing difficult, hairy and slow.
We reached a point about half-way up where the tree split into two
trunks. Because of the layout of branches, we couldn’t continue
without changing over to the other trunk. We had to pass through the
gap between them, just big enough for a person, but it was opening
and closing with the wind. A small timing miscalculation would
squish whoever was in there. Several hair-raising maneuvers later,
the three of us were through and continuing on up. As we got higher,
an awesome panorama unfolded. The tops of the surrounding trees
moved like a green sea, and Redwood Creek looked like a tiny sparking
silver ribbon. As we approached the top, the branches got smaller,
polished and pointed downward. Finally, we reached the lightning
damaged top, we were so thoroughly gripped and awestruck that we
didn’t drink the Heiniken we brought to celebrate. We managed to
wire the beer and a copper tag bearing our names to a branch. We
spent about two minutes basking in the setting sun, but we had to get
down before dark. The descent took about two hours, and when we got
down after all the swaying, the ground felt like it was moving. There
was no way we were going to get back to the car in the dark, so we
burrowed into the duff at the base of the tree and slept the night.
It’s hard to describe what took place that night. I experienced
something so special in my dreams, a gift from this ancient, noble
being we had just visited, a communion I’ll never forget. These
big redwoods are kingdoms of life, homes to all kinds of plants and
animals. Bathed in the four elements, they link Heaven and Earth
with their trunk and hold a living wisdom that spans far beyond
the scale of our own lives. Julia Butterfly knows all about this. I
love what she has done and hope to meet her some day.
Grant: Yes, well my tree thing is ropeswings. I’m good at them,
and until just now I thought I was pretty groovy for putting up so
many good ones. Sheesh.
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There's SO much I love about this story! Every time I re-read it, so
many things grab my attention, it's fantastic. I can't deny that
Charlie's choice of wording gets just a little too...let's say
"new-age" for my tastes toward the end. I don't think I could ever
bring myself to call a tree a "noble being" that "holds a living
wisdom" with a straight face - but I totally understand how he must
have felt up there, or at least I think I do. I'd express it
differently if I were writing about it myself, but I think that the
feelings of awe and wonder and admiration and respect would be just
the same.
I can't help but marvel at the insanely good luck of Charlie deciding,
almost on a whim, to climb the tallest tree in the world, having no
idea where that might be, then going to the library and learning that
this tree not only happens to be in the same *hemisphere* the guy
lives in, not only on the same *continent*, not only in the same
*country*, not only in the same *state*, but bang right there in
Northern California where he already lives and studies! That tree
could have been anywhere. By rights it should have been some weird
exotic species he'd never heard of which only grows in the remote and
inaccessible jungles of Inner-North-Somewherefaraway. The whole
enterprise should have collapsed due to visa-eligibility
technicalities. Instead it was a weekend road trip.
I also can't help but be struck by how much the part about having to
squeeze through the shrinking and growing gap between trunks with
perfect timing to avoid getting crushed sounds like something out of
every platform game ever made, but in real life! At the top of a
giant tree! Which you only got to because you BUILT YOUR OWN
TREE-CLIMBING MORTAR in order overcome the limitations of professional
tree surgeon equipment!!1
Wikipedia has an article on the world's tallest tree, called
Hyperion[1]. It's a 115 metre tall redwood in the Redwood National
and State Parks, whose Wikipedia article mentions the town of Orick,
so I guess this is indeed the tree Charlie climbed, although the park
also includes the world's second and third tallest trees. Hyperion
was supposedly discovered in 2006, but Charlie was born in 1948, so
his college days would have been well before that...perhaps he
climbed a different tree which was the tallest known at the time? The
article on Hyperion makes no mention is this climb. In fact, if you
do a Google search for "Charlie Cunningham climbing world's tallest
tree" you get nothing about this at all. The fact that this
incredible act is also almost entirely undocumented outside one super
obscure publication just helps to make it all the more unreal seeming.
This story conjures up *almost* the same sense of adventure and
exploration and engineering bravado as descending to the bottom of
the Mariana Trench in the bathysphere Trieste, but it's just some
thing some college kids did once and apparently they didn't take any
photos and now almost nobody knows about it.
Well, now you know.
[1]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperion_(tree)
