my first Fern gully tree take down

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Dude that tree is way bigger than it looked.........

take your time, think it through....

and be careful

small and slow on this one my friend....

from the looks of it, don't have much of a choice, seeing that it is one large bush!

Oh, and I like how you tie into those burls.....that is SWEET! haha...that is one Fern Ridden Beast of a Tree !
 
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I'm not quite sure why you are leaving all those bushy branches in your way. If I am spurring my way up, I just keep walking around the tree, stripping branches. Just remember: the more branches you cut off, the less likely the tree is to notice your weight.
{some folks argue against that, mostly related to tall rotten conifers}


Do you climb very many cottonwoods? They don't hinge worth a darn, and the branches break off sooner than you would expect, even on a healthy tree.
 
tramp bushler said:
I'll be taking this one down thisweek Lord willing. I have a ground crew now so I'll b doing the climbing and they can handle the lowering work. The Fern gully tree :) - YouTube
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Great narration as always. I'm not super concerned about you, you seem to know more than most. I just hope the new groundies are up to the task. My advice? You don't need any advice from me. Use that pole saw to spend as little time as possible up that rotten cotton, and stay safe
 
pdqdl said:
I'm not quite sure why you are leaving all those bushy branches in your way. If I am spurring my way up, I just keep walking around the tree, stripping branches. Just remember: the more branches you cut off, the less likely the tree is to notice your weight.
{some folks argue against that, mostly related to tall rotten conifers}


Do you climb very many cottonwoods? They don't hinge worth a darn, and the branches break off sooner than you would expect, even on a healthy tree.
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. The problem is getting around the low side of it . Too rotten for me to stand on. So I can't just screw my way up the tree like I do on a big burly conifer.
 
Cotton wood is the predominant tree in Valdez. Most of them that I have to climb are young and healthy. Yes the small limbs are only useful for messing up throwing a line. I swear they have a rope adhesive on them. . I'm using a 2 lb throw weight and its not enough much of the time. I should have gotten some Zing it. .
 
Regarding the rotten side: I would still be zig-zagging my way up that tree rather than fight all the junk in the way. But I'm not there, and nothing settles a "best technique" question like being the man in the tree.

Shucks. I'm still trying to figure out how you were advancing those ropes around all those bushy suckers. In fact, I'm not entirely certain that I wouldn't have rented a 40' ladder and just gone up the aluminum tree escalator.

That tree looks like a gigantic pain to climb.
 
tramp bushler said:
Well at this point its F.G.tree 2 . Tramp 0 .

What's the difference between being chicken and being wise or smart. . I called for a 4 wd Genii man lift. After some bark 2'×3' fell off reveling more rot than I thot yesterday.
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I think you got the score wrong. F.G.T. played it's last card in the effort to scare you off. I'd penalize the tree one point for delay of game. Score one for yourself for taking security measures to make sure you finish without any team injuries. Call it a tie score.

Chicken is when you don't understand the risks, don't know how to evaluate them, and leave a job that would have been ok to do with the proper experience. Being smart is when you know the risks, and determine that it wasn't worth taking.

Had that tree been life threatening to a trapped busload of 4th graders, I might criticize you for delaying until you got a proper lift for the job. Since no such scenario existed, I can only add praise for not trying to join the "arboricultural injuries" forum in a most unsatisfying manner.

Myself, I am plain old chicken. I did a big old barkless elm tree once, and gave myself such a good scare that it still keeps me out of dead trees 25 years later. I cringe when I see folks climbing dead trees, although I don't have the same fear of hollow trees, like the one you were in. Maybe that is just a lack of good sense.
 
No shame in that buddy. I refused to climb a silver maple today looking very similar to your cottonwood. Typical mini lift job, but its broke down, client is antsy, of course management sends us there saying it can probably be climbed. Climbing it is the easy part, the way a tree like these reacts to shock loads is what will get you.

Make sure to post pics with the lift if you can.
 
OK. Thanks guys. Dan called it right ( Treeman Dan) . . . If it was a solid shell it would have been no prob. And there are plenty of cottonwoods in town here like this one. I haven't hadto climb any of them yet. I got up as far as I had yesterday but on the back side . Chunks of bark and wood kept bombing me so I got to lookin and poking around more. :msp_ohmy: . . That's when I called the boss. I feel badly about it. But I feel better than if I had broke my back or hips ect.

So this afternoon I took down 4 smaller ones. It was blowing a little. . No trauma, no drama.!! . Topped them at 4" diameter a bit higher than I would have the F.G.T. .

Thanks again.
 
tramp bushler said:
Ya, that would be easier. But if its too easy, what do they need a climber for. They can just use a 12 buck an hour dummy.
I figured this kind of tree was an arborist bread and butter.
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If I was your boss I would make you complete this removal out of principal and for your own good....... manually. A arborists bread and butter is efficently evalauting trees, youve wasted days on this afternoon tree. Know what your capabilities are,I knew you were in trouble from the get go.
 
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mr. holden wood said:
If I was your boss I would make you complete this removal out of principal and for your own good....... manually. A arborists bread and butter is efficently evalauting trees, youve wasted days on this afternoon tree. Know what your capabilities are,I knew you were in trouble from the get go.
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The only time you ever show up here is when you have something bad to say about somebody. Take it someplace else.
 
mr. holden wood said:
A arborists bread and butter is efficently evalauting trees, youve wasted days on this afternoon tree. Know what your capabilities are...
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Really? I have to take issue with that on several points.

1. An arborist's bread and butter is ACCURATELY evaluating trees, which can only be done in many cases with an actual climb of the tree. HE DID THAT.
2. Having evaluated the tree, he seems to know right well what his capabilities are, and he prudently called for backup in the form of a lift.

You are going to criticize a man for climbing a tree and then calling for a lift, when you haven't come closer than 1000 miles from it? If you were my boss, I don't think I would climb very long for you, unless you were willing to climb that tree and show me what it was all about.

I employ climbers, and have for years. My deal with all of them, whether they have lots of experience or just a little, is that I will never tell them how they must do a particular part of a tree job. It's their life, and I'm not in the tree. I only reserve the right to give advice, make strong recommendations, and to order them out of the tree if I feel like it.
 

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