Tree Staff Training, Spring 09

Day 1: Basic Skills

Monkey Run, Ithaca, NY and Hoffman Challenge Course, Dryden, NY

Saturday, March 29, 2009

            For this training, Mark led us new tree staffers (me, Rob, Julien, Dana, and Lillian), as well as Devin (an experienced tree-staffer), Heidi (who hopes to be tree staff another semester), and Jessica (an ex-COEer looking for tree climbing skill to use in her graduate studies of etymology).  With a bright and early start at 8 o’clock in the basement (earlier than any of my classes) and a bountiful breakfast, we piled into the van and went out to the flood plane at monkey run, in search of sycamores to rig with top ropes for our first day of class.

            To place the anchors, Rob, Julien, and I lead climbed the two sycamores that we found.  This meant climbing on rope with a belayer, and stop every so often to wrap a webbing sling around the tree and clip your rope into it.  Then, once we had anchors set near the top, we down climbed, removing our equipment on the way down.  Once we had p-chord rigged, we packed up and headed on to the challenge course.

            At the HCC, after getting our van stuck in a couple places, we hauled all our stuff  to the platform and started to practice hand tossing.  Once everyone was thoroughly sick of failing at that, Lillian gave a little big shot lesson and we had much more success with that.  With line in 3 trees, Rob introduced the full circle and we split up to practice rigging the anchors.  Mark also showed us the wrap 3/pull 2 method instead of girth hitches or basket hitches for the anchor webbing.  Julien gave us all a lesson on the Texas kick, then we all jugged up to the platform.  We tried out the method of anchoring in the tree with blakes hitches instead of static lines.  This definitely seems good in case of emergency situations, but it also means a lot more rope to manage, especially if you have students unfamiliar with the blakes hitch.

            After rappelling down, I taught my lesson on switching to rappel mid-air.  By now it was getting late, and we decided not to try climbing the other trees we had rigged, because we wouldn’t really have time to get up there and set anchor lines and everything.  So we pulled our ropes and packed our stuff into the van.  Mark kindly dropped us off on North; we didn’t need to unload our stuff into the basement since we were using the same equipment for Sunday’s adventures.

Day 2: Motion Lanyard and Tyro

Stuart Park, Ithaca, NY

Sunday, March 30, 2009

            The next morning, we rallied the troops quickly in the basement and went right up to the van, since there was no gear to gather.  As we were pulling out, we managed to grab Andy, who apparently thought we were meeting at 8 instead of 9 and had left when he found no one there.  We ate breakfast in the van as we drove to Stuart Park.

            At Stuart, we found some great trees for practicing with the motion lanyard, and split up to play around for a while.  I was amazed at how much more natural it’s seeming now to climb with the motion lanyard.  I’m even getting a little better at tossing the rope.  Mark also showed us how to use a throw weight to toss for the next branch, but more importantly, how to use the laws of physics to make the weight swing back to you.  If you bounce the weight into the air as it’s hanging, it starts to swing a tiny bit.  If you continue to bounce it as the swing is moving toward you, then the swing gets bigger and bigger until you can grab the weight.  It was magical.

            After moving around in the tree a bit and working up to the top, everyone gathered to rig the tyro.  Jessica and I stayed up in the tree we were in to put one end up, and Rob tied off the other.  We discovered it was a bit difficult to have proper group cooperation with people in two different trees and on the ground, but we figured it out eventually.  On our end, we set up the z-drag and had everyone pull it tight from the ground, then we fastened the end with a tensionless hitch.  Jessica and I rappelled off our blakes, leaving them up for Rob and Julien to climb up and test the tyro.  It went through a fair number of small branches, but it held secure for both of them, and on the other end they did a double stranded rappel to come out of the second tree.

            By now, our time was about up, so we coiled up all our ropes and packed back into the van.  At COE, we took stock of all our gear again (we sadly lost one carabiner to the field), and debriefed before dispersing back to the real world.