California Treeing, Feburary 2007

Just returned from two weeks in the San Francisco bay area where I was lucky enough to work with Maguire Tree Care and Vital Tree Care, two tree businesses run by friends. We did a variety of work.

For the first job, we did some crown height reduction in some screen trees for a client in Woodside. This involved climbing tiny trees, coring into wood that was like 2 inches thick, and reducing the height of the trees. I forgot the name of the trees we did this in. I also climbed three small redwoods very close to power lines. Scary, but also kind of fun. The last tree I climbed held onto my ring device, and I had to reclimb the tree to get it unstuck. Drag. Then I lost the ring device on the job, supposedly (we can't find it).

The second job was working on a bunch of valley oaks in Woodside, California. Fred, Paul, and Mike (Paul's groundsman) climbed and pruned the valley oaks while I ascended a small redwood to take out a dead top. I also climbed a 25-foot black walnut and removed it. It was slightly difficult because all the trees were over a horse track, and riders came by constantly. One horse refused to calm down, and Paul and I watched for 20 minutes as the rider attempted to calm the animal (we think the chainsaws freaked the horse). I then played "rail" (a phrase we yell to tell climbers if a car is coming) for about an hour. Boring, but, hey, California sun and shine!

I then worked with Paul on removing two pines in a guy's front yard, right on Route One, right on the Pacific Ocean (picture above is from tree I was in). This was the most physically challenging work I did in California, mainly because I had to haul a huge saw (a Husky) into the tree to chunk down wood (and I am out of shape!). I also removed a VERY dead pine, which was semi-sketch. No clean-up though, and that was cool.

The last job was with Fred, and I did some of my most challenging climbing. We removed mistletoe from a 30-40 foot Modesto ash. When I first tried to access the tree, I got both throw line and rope stuck. I had to climb the tree freestyle, with minimal rope help. My tie-in was sketchy, since the tree had very tight crotches and not a lot of wood up top. In any case, I did manage to get around the entire tree from one tie-in. We removed two fairly large branches over the house, with Fred acting as ground man.

In all, I love California. The trees are magnificent, huge, diverse, green, and funky. I would love, someday, to climb one of the big redwoods (Fred recently climbed a 365-foot redwood in northern California).