Taking it to the Trees

Tom Dunlap owns the coolest slingshot I’ve ever seen. It’s mounted on the end of an eight-foot pole, and he can aim the whole apparatus like a crossbow. Amazingly, this is a professional tool, one he uses when he climbs and prunes trees. He also uses it for recreation, as he did the other day when he took me tree climbing.

In addition to running his tree service company, Dunlap teaches climbing to professional arborists and recreational climbers, and he serves as adviser to the U of M Urban Forestry Club. He accompanied the club on a trip to Seattle last year to attend an international arborist conference, and to climb “superlative trees,” as he calls them. As student Sarah Folger recalled, the highlight of the trip was climbing a 200-foot old-growth Douglas fir in Seward Park on Lake Washington. “It was awesome,” she said. “We went with people who were really good climbers. You could even see Bill Gates’ house across the water.”

With The Rake in tow, Dunlap’s target was more modest: the canopy of a 65-foot American elm tree on the U of M’s St. Paul campus. He shot a small bag of lead shot through the upper branches and used its tether to thread a heavy climbing rope along the same route, eventually anchoring one end of the rope to the trunk.

Tom sent me up the free end using a technique adopted from spelunking; I used two handle-like devices called Mar Bars, one on my feet and one for my hands, to ratchet my way up the rope like an inchworm. I was quickly reminded that the sports I enjoy on the ground don’t require much strength in the biceps.

After taking a few breathers on the way up, I arrived at the lower branches about 25 feet up, and Tom quickly followed on another rope. In the midst of 30 mph gusts of spring wind, one difference between tree climbing and rock climbing quickly became apparent. Rocks don’t sway disconcertingly in the wind. The view from above was nice, but more appealing was the invisibility of the climber, even among the spring buds on a relatively bare tree. Students walking by were mostly oblivious as we spied on them from our living aerie. This climber noted how much of people’s lives are lived in a small zone between zero and seven feet off the ground. It was with some reluctance that we eventually lowered ourselves back into it.