I just went past my seventh anniversary since I made my first very tentative tree climb on rope. In the last few years I've been mentoring more people who want to progress to becoming self-sufficient tree climbers. Before that I focused primarily on facilitating new climbers. That was usually a one shot deal in some kind of scheduled group climb context. Important thing was to help people climb safely and efficiently for a limited amount of time. There's a lot to facilitating as many of you know, it can't be minimized as "no big deal". It's a big deal when you take responsibility for a new climber's life on rope.

Now I'm learning some new lessons while mentoring climbers. Some climbers are naturals, they quickly acquire an efficient climbing motion, they adjust well to height and they take tree climbing seriously. Other climbers not so "natural" but with practice they get there, it's all good. The common factor that brings them back to climb again is a love of being in the woods and nature, the endless physical and mental challenges of tree climbing and the joy of being up in a tree. The lesson I'm learning now is that as an experienced climber I've internalized so many small skills, processes, technique refinements, gear adjustments, subtle risk assessments, and on and on. It's easy to forget this when working with newer climbers. An experienced climber makes it all look fairly smooth (most of the time, haha). But there are so many moments in a climb where decisions are made based on hard-earned experience and many hours on rope in trees. Every climber aspiring to be self-sufficient has to hit those walls one at a time and learn how to solve and work through them. It is not easy.

This is probably very obvious to many of you. I'm bringing this up because as an intermediate or experienced tree climber it's very easy to fall into thinking roped tree climbing is easy, all you need is a rope, harness and a few carabiners. All you have to do is set the rope, go up, and down, what's the big deal?

So here's to the new climbers who are working through massive throwline tangles, stuck throwbags and other throwing frustrations, improbably difficult situations up in trees, the fear that can happen at the wrong time, and the fatigue that can turn a "routine" climb into a cascade of problems. It's the stuff of learning to climb trees, none of it is easy or simple.
-AJ

Well said!

I have found that I learn more about tree climbing while I am teaching than I do while being "out there" and making personal climbs. I have learned more about climbing since becoming an instructor than in all the years on a rope before that.

The biggest issue that I have while acting as an instructor is overcoming my desire to climb "my" way, forgetting that students do not need to see that I am climbing differently from what I am teaching. "Do as I say, not as I do," does not work while working with beginners. They see the way that I'm climbing and they want to climb that way also.

Making myself climb the way that I am teaching them forces me to go back to the basics and that is something that all climbers need to do on occasion, regardless of whether you are teaching a course to beginners. There are a lot of us that could use a return trip to the most basic and simplest means of going up into a tree. Teaching forces me to go back and review, both in my mind and on the rope, the way I learned myself. It's a reminder that some of those basic techniques are actually quite difficult. If you don't believe me, try going back to basic traditional DRT and do yourself a fifty foot climb. No splittails, no ascenders; a bridge tied with the end of the climbing rope, a five/three Blakes hitch, and a prusik knot on a footloop. I don't know about the rest of you, but that will wear me out! Why do we even teach it? Because it's simple, because it's safe, and mostly because it's something that every climber needs to be able to do, including us instructors.

After more than forty years of going up and down ropes in a variety of activities and having been involved in recreational tree climbing for almost twenty years, I never cease to be amazed at how much more I learn while teaching beginners. Every time that I teach I am forced to review my own evolution as a climber and during that review I suddenly will see new paths for discovery that were missed before and that eventually can lead to new ways of climbing.