Climbing News

Last month we told you about the volunteer project we helped out with on Belle Isle in Detroit, Michigan. This month we want to give you a breakdown of some of the cool tricks and techniques we used to get some of these big logs out of the canals and onto shore! We talked with Jake Carufel who used to work for Bartlett Arborist Supply, but now runs his own company, Canopy Climber Tree Care, out of Port Huron, Michigan. Jake is a Certified Arborist, as well as the 2016 Michigan Tree Climbing Champion, so it's always fun to catch up and see what types of cool climbing tricks that he and other climbers are employing to get the job done! Jake wrote the following account that details what he used to suspend himself over the water and make the cuts without getting wet.

When it comes to being a tree climber, one of the best things you can ask for is a good groundie who is capable of keeping up with the brush, making sure that most everything is done when you get out of the tree, and, most importantly, great at running ropes! There is nothing better than taking the top of a tree and watching and ' more importantly ' feeling the top come slowly and steadily to a stop before touching the ground. That is what a good groundie is capable of. It makes your day way less stressful and go more smoothly. It also makes it possible to talk to your significant other when you get home at night instead of losing your voice halfway through the day from screaming at someone on the ground or from screaming in pain from busting your ribs on the spar as you get jerked around 50' off the ground!

So we did an interview with some climbers that we are friends with a couple weeks ago. We pretty much just asked them some basic questions to see how they felt about the industry, climbing gear, any tree climbing tips they may have, and what keeps them going every single day! Our first interview is with Dan Thornton, who, if any of you have been to MTCC (Michigan Tree Climbing Championships) you've probably met him or talked to him behind the tape of some of the events or threw a disc around after the comp in the parking lot. Dan has always been willing to come help out with volunteer projects and is a great worker that is starting to make a name for himself in the industry. We were super happy to meet up with him and get his thoughts on what he sees going on in the tree industry! So here we go!

Before Bartlett Arborist Supply moved to the country roads of Marlette Michigan, over 100 years ago the company started in a small home in Detroit ' Michigan's Motor City. But there's more to Detroit than just cars, abandoned buildings, and the current uprise of the city center.
Belle Isle is a beautiful 982 acre island rich in nature, history, and community. You cross over the Detroit River by bridge, leaving the cement jungle and high rise buildings behind to find yourself traveling down a road that will bring you to beaches, boats, historic buildings, parks, even an aquarium, and an astounding Conservatory holding everything from 40 ft tall tropical plants, delicate cactuses, and a fern garden, to rare flowering plants and fruit trees.

One of the most interesting things about tree work is the way that we all tend to learn the trade. We learn from those around us, and in many companies this is all the training we get. A great term I heard in the past is that we are all 'Work Isolated,' meaning that we might all essentially be doing the same thing, but we may be doing it completely different because we never really see the way that other companies are doing it. This was very true before the rise of the Internet and social media such as Facebook and Instagram. Now we have the ability to see what someone else is doing on the other side of the globe in a matter of minutes! So let me tell you a story from my past from right about the time that the tree industry was discovering Facebook!

Several years ago I remember looking through an arborist supply catalog while sitting in the bucket truck at lunch. In it I saw an ad for a pair of chainsaw pants that cost $300 and my mind was blown! 'Who in the hell would pay $300 for a pair of pants?' was all I could muster under my breath. The guys sitting next to me felt the same way! That was crazy! Our blue jeans cost a fraction of that and I could buy 10, heck 15 pair for the price of this one pair of pants! But, I must say, the thought of having a pair of chainsaw pants had planted a small seed inside of my head, even if I was bewildered about how I could afford a pair!

Have you ever been up in a tree and needed to lift some limbs, maybe to clear a roof or overhand, but also needed to immediately have some sort of friction on the rope because the pieces were too heavy for your ground guy to hold them? Many times when I was doing line clearance, we would find ourselves in these situations where we were lifting limbs off of or over power lines, but also needed at immediate friction to help us lower the limbs. We tried to have someone lifting while the other was taking up slack with the Port a Wrap, but that never really kept all the slack out of the system, and if the piece came off too early, there were way too many hands near the Port a Wrap to let something run at the correct time. So, as always, Kevin Bingham, who invented the Rope Wrench and Rope Runner, came up with a super cool use for the already popular Rope Wrench: the Rigging Wrench!