World-class tree climbing

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)