Champion trees are the largest of their species worldwide. That doesn’t always mean that they are the biggest trees around. In fact, it is rare for a tree to reach above 150 feet. Ascending the Giants has climbed many champions that aren’t especially big. Then again, they have climbed many trees that are gigantic.
Big trees are natural candidates for champion status and French and Koomjian will often climb them to determine if they are, in fact, champions. Climbing big trees is nothing like swinging yourself up on the lowest branch of your backyard oak and enjoying the perspective of the garden from ten feet up. It is nothing like that. At all.
First, add 150 to 250 feet (read fifteen to twenty-five stories) to the height of that oak, depending on the tree to be climbed. Second, add the inchworm-style climb up the hundred-plus-foot giant on the rope that is rigged to a branch. Third, add all the gear that is needed to properly climb the tree without leaving a trace. ATG is adamant about using non-invasive methods of ascending trees in their attempt to leave each tree exactly as they found it.
Gear includes: a six-to-eight-foot long sling shot known as a Big Shot that shoots a tiny weighted pouch connected to fishing line to set the first rope over the highest possible branch; if that doesn’t work, there is the crossbow attached to a fishing reel that shoots a steel bolt high into the tree for the same reason; there are lots of reels, lots of fishing line, lots of throw balls and bolts because sometimes it takes a few tries to set the first line securely; hundreds of feet of throw line are needed to hoist up and over the first branch; next is the access line—a ten-millimeter wide static rope used for the initial climb into the tree; after the access line has been anchored, there are shorter climbing ropes that allow climbers to maneuver through the canopy; there is a cambium saver that sits between a rope and a branch so that the rope never rubs on the branch as it is climbed; a harness, carabineers and pulleys; and the measurement tools that include measuring tape, a GPS locator and a ten-foot-long, telescoping reach tool used to measure the tip top of the tree. All of this gear collectively weighs hundreds of pounds and climbers can feel like pack mules hauling it on their backs while bush whacking in search of giants.
Another factor that makes climbing big trees somewhat different than your average backyard adventure is the weather. For example, everyone knows that it rains in ATG’s home state of Oregon, but weather can go from sprinkles to a wind-whipping storm and back again in the course of half an hour. On one expedition to count the number of big trees in one specific area, the spitting rain had not let up all day. French and volunteer climber Jason Brown are climbing a majestic Douglas Fir, Pseudotsuga menziesii that stands 268-feet tall and measures almost nine feet in diameter in a remote old-growth forest. They ascend their ropes toward the upper canopy of the great-granddaddy tree estimated to be over 500-years-old. It takes one hour to climb 200 feet.
The rain relents a little, but French notices a knot of black clouds and a wind traveling toward him like an ocean wave on a sea of blue-green needles across the forest. “Check it out!” French yells to Brown and points to the oncoming storm blast, but already his voice is getting lost in the thunder of thrashing branches.
French secures himself to a solid limb and feels the deep groan of the giant bending to the wind. The treetop to which their ropes are tethered will sway as much as ten feet in either direction and they will sway with it. It’s like rocking on the Titanic before it tips. Unable to secure himself in time, Brown dangles from his climbing rope as it glides in long arcs and he holds on like a tiny spider whose web-making has been interrupted by the elements. It would be reasonable to want to return to the ground, but both men have secretly given in to what feels like the inevitable choice. Eyes round with Evil-Kenevil-derring-do, French yells to Brown, “Are you committed?” Brown lets out a whoop and yells back, “Let’s do it!” and the two men inch their way through the storm to the tenuous top to get their height measurement.
Dead or dying branches known as ‘widow-makers’ can unexpectedly snap and shoot like humongous javelins to the ground grabbing a tangle of other branches as they hurtle downward. Or, like in the Western Red Cedar, Thuja plicata, the tops of old giants can die. Some tops are then blown off in a storm, like the one French and Brown were climbing in. One cannot always tell from the ground if a top is ready to blow.
There was one giant that ATG planned to climb, but when they arrived at the tree they found that it was in a precarious state. A Sitka Spruce, Picea sitchensis, on Rector Ridge in the Oregon Coast Range lost its top which impaled itself in the ground over 100-feet away. The tree once stood 187-feet tall, but when ATG visited after the incident, they found that the tree now measured 111-feet tall (which they determined by climbing a neighbor tree). The erect, inverted treetop measured 55-feet leaving 21-feet of tree unaccounted for. French estimates some of that was smashed to bits on impact and the rest of the treetop was jammed deep into the earth making its own monument to itself.
No one wants to be attached to a treetop when it blows off.
French and Brown both privately considered possibilities such as these during their climb, but the chance to intimately know that grand-daddy tree was far more alluring than the outside chance of limb failure, even with winds upwards of 30 mile-per-hour. Such is the call of trees for some.
Needless to say, should you suspect that you have a big champion tree in your backyard, do not try this at home. Call the big tree guys.
Pt. 1, Tree Geeks, Pt. 3: The National Registry of Big Trees, Pt. 4
