Hello !

In our board lagdla.com we were pointing the lake of recognition of tree climbing by authorities. As some of us are also divers and used to practice anywhere thanks to serious levels recognised all over the planet we fastly thought about creating TC levels.

We've started a big conversation trying to find the best way to satisfy climbers, authorities and climbing schools in France but also anywhere else so we've created our proposition to the french tree climbing federation, also thinking about compatibilies with TCI's formations as we want to avoid troubles we've witnessed between PADI and our diving federation.

I translate to you our idea, i hope that some of you will give us their opinion.

You'll find strange stuffs...
Colored cards : we have thought about it because some "extreme" disciplines in France (canyoning, rock climbing, kayaking, martial arts...) are using colours for their levels recognition, this colours are normalised and the same in progression for all these disciplines.
PSC1 wich is the first secourism level of the "croix rouge"
RIFAH wich means "Reaction and Intervention in Front of an Accident in Highs" (great it's translatable in english! ^^) it's inspired by the RIFAP wich is a secourism formation of our diving federation and it's a must as we think that we need a special secourism formation adaptating classical technics to TC needs.
CQP EGA is the official diploma that can legaly surround and give formations to climbers with paiement in exchange. It is totaly forbidden in France to be paid for pedagogic sportive activities if you don't have this diploma, it's the law. It'a little bit crazy but even if Peter Jenkins would come here to teach TC he could receive money for it only if he would have passed the CQP EGA before that. This explains a third level of teaching in this list.


Level 1 : Beginner without autonomy (white card)
Prerogatives : climbing surrounded by L4 and upper
Condition : classical medical certificate of compatibility with the activity (it's a legal obligation in France)

Level 2 : Recreationnal climber in semi-autonomy (yellow card)
Prerogatives : climbing surrounded by L3 and upper
Conditions : L1 + medical certificate

Level 3 : Advanced recreationnal climber in autonomy (orange card)
Prerogatives : climbing in autonomy + surrounding up to 3 L2 climbers
Conditions : L2 + medical certificate + PSC1 + RIFAH

Level 4 : Initiator (green card with blue stripe)
Prerogatives : same as L3 + surrounding up to 6 L1
Conditions : L3 + medical certificate + PSC1 + RIFAH

Level 5 : Monitor (purple card with blue stripe)
Prerogatives : surrounding L1 and L2 up to 6 climbers + in charge of L1 L2 and L3 formations
Conditions : L4 + medical certificate + PSC1 + RIFAH

Level 6 : Professionnal Educator (black card with red stripe)
Prerogatives : surrounding L1 and L2 up to 8 climbers + in charge of L1 to L5 formations
Conditions : L3 + medical certificate + PSC1 + RIFAH + CQP EGA


Thanks by advance for your comments !

Excellente. Pouvez-vous donner plus d'explications sur PSC1?

Excellent. Can you give more explanation of PSC1?

Thanks,
-Andrew

Avec joie / You're welcome

Prevention Secours Civique 1 it gives something like "Civic Prevention and First aid" first degree, it's the equivalent of your BLS (Basic Life Support).
It learns the first aid basics such as recognition of the victim's state of injury, mouth to mouth resucitation, manual heart resucitation, lateral security position...
It's not a healing diploma, just the basics to learn how to react for the most important : bringing a victim back to consciousness, giving an efficient emergency call and winning time untill having real medical support.

May i ask you what do think about these levels ? Pros and cons ?

I admire your commitment and I agree that a system like this would be helpful to obtain permission to climb trees that are owned by city, county, state or federal government.

No such credentials are needed for any school owner to get a business license and insurance. You need not have any credentials to operate your own business using trees on private property that you either own or have the owner’s permission. I provide to private property owners a certificate that my insurance names them on our policy as an Additional Insured.

I was active for years with a group that tried to start such a program but many directors including me were driven away. There have been many attempts but the process gets halted up over a basic first step. The board objects to recognize that a student that graduates from a Basic Tree Climbing class taught by a recognized instructor and has demonstrated all skills needed to safely tree climbing can be recognized as a Basic Tree Climber. Climbing a tree on your own is what every climber wants to do. It comes down to this: membership in the group has no advantage to the basic climber expect to give them a good feeling that they are supporting recreational tree climbing in some fashion.

Granted Instructors should aspire to obtain recognition so they can display their credentials to prospective students. But when requesting permission to climb trees on government owned property you go nowhere if you lack insurance.

I have vender agreements with five government agencies that allow us to collect a fee for the events that we conduct with them getting a percentage of the funds. None of them required any proof of our skills and to my knowledge no one anywhere has gain permission based on skill recognition.

Skill recognition is valuable and is needed but agreement on the process is difficult. Your outline is very similar to those many of us have been working on and would be happy to share my views.



Here is an outline for those interested in only using the Doubled Rope Technique. (DRT)

First time STUDENT participates in GUIDED CLIMB conducted by FACILITATOR.

A STUDENT CLIMBER enrolls in a BASIC TREE CLIMBING CLASS DRT conducted by INSTRUCTOR DRT.

Graduates are registered as BASIC TREE CLIMBER DRT and can climb solo.

Enrolls in a FACILITATION CLASS conducted by INSTRUCTOR DRT.

Apprentices become FACILITATOR limited to a 3:1 ratio graduates are registered as FACILITATOR. After conducting many events they progress to full FACILITATOR by recogniton from their INSTRUCTOR.

Enrolls in a INSTRUCTORS CLASS DRT conducted by SENIOR INSTRUCTOR DRT.

Graduates are registered as INSTRUCTOR DRT.

Enrolls in a SENIOR INSTRUCTORS CLASS DRT conducted by MASTER INSTRUCTOR.

Graduates are registered as SENIOR INSTRUCTOR DRT after completing all ratings they can enroll in a MASTERS CLASS conducted by MASTER INSTRUCTOR.

Graduates are registered as MASTER INSTRUCTOR.

Let us continue this topic in detail and all pull on the rope the same directon.

See you at the top,
Dan House

Thank you so much Dan, your comment is a huge encouragement because in France most of tree climbers are young followers and we are really listening what originals climbers have to say. So having such a positive comment and above all such a close level's progression is a big step forward in feeling confidance about our proposition.

And I'm really happy that you express the will to continue this discussion.

As you say convincing autorities is a difficult task. I hope that our work convincing our federation (it seems according to the union representative of the SNGEA -french union of recreationnal tree climbing professionals- that we are on the good way for it !) and two other very important institutions (french minister of sports and the ONF, the autority in charge of national's forests, we are far to be at least recognised as existing by these institutions, that will be the biggest part of the work) will bring more strengh to the legitimity of this idea to convince your own institutions. I really hope that our work here will help the guides that american climbers are to us to enjoy more freedom in their practice. It would be a nice way to thank all of you for inspiring us !



That's the way when you live in a liberal zone in which government has less autority than a "socialist" zone. It has its benefits and its drawbacks in both cases so i couldn't tell what the best system and fortunatly that's not the point. It is as it is. But it will have consequences when tree climbers teachers will travel to work, equivalences will be hard to be recognised and we will have to find the "less worse" solution to make it possible. That's gonna be a pain in the a** so i'll try to introduce this reflexion as soon as possible hoping that giving the subject before the levels progression will be to "wroten on the stone" will open easyer equivalences.



If i understand well you have two binary levels : "Not Basic" and "Basic" but as you do in your club you can teach it in three steps through your classes “Show me the Ropes”, “All the way to the Top” and “Learn to Solo” wich are similar to our three levels. Our proposition of these 3 levels is based on several reflexions...

About the first one we thought that it would be a good thing to give a card even to completly new climbers because it makes them feel introduced to the level process. The content in our first level will be (if we continue on the way we follow) more heavy than what you seem ask to your beginners in your first class. For exemple we want them at the end of the formation to be able to ensure themselves properly and know basics such as "what's de difference between a static and a dinamic rope", as we take this first level as the introduction to level's 2 program.

When it comes to the second level i assume that in fact it would be the same in knowledge and practice as the "basic tree climber" but not with a full autonomy. Beside they can practice out of a structure as long as they are with a level 3. Three reasons about that :
a- We want to be sure to garanty the most serious security level to our institutions, even if it's a little bit to much in facts. Just because we want to obtain solid autorisations.
b- We think that it would be a great benefit to the activity that L2 and L3 would climb together. It gives freedom to L3 to practice with their family and friends outside any structure as long as they have learned basic skills, it would give (at least we hope so) the will to L2 to progress furter in technics, knowledges and above all security, and it would be a good way to consolidate relations between climbers.
c- We don't want to limitate climbing rope technics to DRT, in fact we never talked about it as we all enjoy climbing technic's diversity. DRT is poorly practiced here as the most popular technic teached in schools is DdRT, and SRT is also very popular. So climbers will have to learn more technics before getting really able to climb solo the way they want.

We didn't really talk about equivalences neither between Basic TC and our levels, for now it seems to me that even if it's not totally fair BTC would receive the equivalence of our L2. Hoping that climbing with L3 or learning "RIFAH" and different rope technics if they want to obtain L3 would be seen as a positive benefit.

But well... this is in most part my personnal opinion and nothing is yet confirmed.


Beside your comments about all this that i would be really glad to receive could you tell me more about the history of your process of levels building ?
When it started, who was involved, when it ended... and do you think that it could come up again ?


Thanks again a lot for all you told.

A brief history may be helpful to be aware of what to avoid in your creation so here I go: Peter Jenkins first taught novices how to climb in 1983 as a separate part of his arborist services. He taught his staff how to conduct festival style events. Then created first a Basic Tree Climbing Class followed by class to create trained Facilitators how to conduct festival style events. These graduates advanced to then teaching others how to teach the classes and a Master Level was formed.

Over the years the sport grew and spread to other areas and countries. Guidelines were created and revised to perfect a safe and fun event. As the sport grew clients wanting to attend classes then had many choices and styles that created competition between Instructors.

In 2007 during a conference almost all Instructors attended a meeting where we all committed to creating a non-for-profit advisory board. For the next five years guidelines were created that detail the minimum safe procedures and that members were urged to meet or exceed. Membership levels were planned and finally after five years they finally recognized Instructors who met the criteria they created but with the fatal flaw of ignoring the skill levels of the graduate of a Basic Tree Climbing Class. This took so long that members lost hope of any good ever happening and membership declined; Skilled Instructors saw very little use for membership so annual fees decreased. Cash flow reversed to a level where funding is now based on only good will donations and annual fund raisers.

It has come to my attention that guidelines and membership levels are the key items. Consulting with all other agencies that involve safe conduct at height is needed. There are many that have specific standards to be followed whenever a person is placed in peril on a rope with fall possibilities and impact from items/people overhead.

I read that your country already has a federation or union of recreational tree climbers so that is great place to start. I suggest that you create committees from this group that will address that least these five topics; Membership; Safety; Guidelines; Business and Outreach. For example: a candidate that desires to become an Instructor presents his guidelines to the Safety committed to verify that minimum standards are meet, if so they forward the request to the Business committee to verify licenses and insurance policies are met. Once approved the Membership committee accepts the application and presents the new Instructor with membership card specific to the level approved, specific approved logos to be displayed for marketing purposes and applications for the Instructors graduates to become members.

Having the recognition of a peer group to declare that you have proven to be a safe Instructor in good standing will be a great first step to present to anyone that you are asking permission from. Private land owners or park managers ask are you insured and are you capable.

I hope that this is for some help.

Dan

Dan, great analysis of the U.S. history on trying to organize a tree climber federation.

I really like the idea of putting these different levels down in writing as recreational tree climber guidelines. I see it as completely voluntary to participate or not and a very positive way to create milestones for climber skill attainment. It will take balls for someone or a group of American climbers to go ahead and resolve and publish the different levels. There will always be disagreement on the details, so be it. There can be two or more competing tree climber federations in the U.S., may the most wisely written and practical skill level guidelines win.

For anyone seeking to professionally lead climbs, teach climbing skills or otherwise engage in rec climbing activities professionally, credible liability insurance is a huge issue. As far as I tell what's available now is total junk for what you have to pay. I've hoped that the rec tree climber organizations in the U.S. would focus on that issue but it never seemed to happen.

Bradypus, I will take a look at your proposal in more detail and provide feedback.
-AJ

Thank you Moss for your future back up, i'm unpatient to read it !

Thank you so much too Treetramp for your answer. I'll translate and share the historic part
I won't do it for the advice that you give us about the instructor recognization for a good reason : we allready have a more efficient process thanks to our union.
The CQP EGA (level 6 in our level progression) is a state diploma based on a master class giving guidelines and standarts builted by our best professionnals. It's, like any other class on any other subject, in progress as it allways need to be. But thanks to this obligation to pass this class and obtain the diploma to be able to be a professional instructor all the instructors have the same basis and follow the same guidelines. Levels 4 and 5 that we proposes are just like any federal instructor diplomas of any sport federation in France : following guide lines gived by the federation. The only diference is that for now they don't exist for tree climbing. Level 4 is on study right at this time by our federation and logically level 5 will be done later.

In fact we are more focusing on recreationnal levels (level 1 to 3) as they could make possible if they would exist to make us benefit autorised autonomy in public forests and parcs. Doing so we will influence the CQP EGA content as it will have to learn how to teach these levels, but we don't want to change the existence and process of attribution of this diploma. It's a good standard allready in use and we want to make it more adapted to recreationnal levels desired by climbers, not change the way it is teached or attributed.

Our point is really in levels 1 2 and 3 : complete beginner, average climber and advanced climber. Because as you seem to tell in your history of TC if recreationnal climbers are forgotten through the will of making professional levels it ends like you witnessed it : leasure climbers go away. And that's a point we've witnessed too, building a federation with professionnal talking to professionnals can only finish on the complete lost of interest about the activity by recreationnal practicist.
We are tired of the great vacuum of a federation that lost the meaning of its existence. Of course having good instructors is an obligation, but in the end they only work with and for recreationnal climbers, amators. Forgetting this they cut themselves from their "clients".

In LAGDLA even if few instructors are participating to the debat we see ourselves only as leasure practicists and we only say what we want as leasure practicists. We have seen the lasts researchs that our federation made about basics levels, take a sit : 7 levels before having a taste of autonomy, wich in fact isn't named anywhere ! 7 levels named like if we were retarded children ("bud" "branch" "cambium" and so on). You talked about 5 years of reflexion, guess what, 5 years is also exactly what it tooked to our federation to make such a poor project. It pissed us off so much that we thought "ok let's work to make our idea come true". And let me tell you, we are defenetly motivated to fight until we'll gain what we want : rational levels, real autonomy and real possibility to use it.


If they agree with our proposition, great, we will work hand in hand to realize it, if they don't we have a plan B, like Big one.


If you want to work again on these levels you'll need more time than us because of your biggest comunity, and because we are in the hurry to stick with the actual calendar of our federation we may have to act before you could. But we would be so glad to have a comun reflexion about these basic levels so we could benefit of your experience and share together as many comun points as possible so equivalences between our systems would be easyer to provide.
As a diver i know how much a pain it can be for both sides if we desagree on it. It tooked years before your WRSTC system and our CMAS system argyed on equivalences between american and european diving levels, and this silly war is still active in some tortured brains bringing tensions between each side of the same coin. IMO we have lost to much time, for ecological reasons we need to bring people to trees fastly and greatly. Making peace and working together the earlyer possible would be such a benefit for all of us.

In this objective could you initiate a resumption of this work ? Would Moss bring his balls too and help you to do so ?

And i ask also this last request to the tree chatter comunity. As we've done it by our side i know possible that a forum can play the role of a work base for this kind of project.
All you need is a category to put reflexion topics in it, the most interested climbers possible to post their opinion in it and there you go.
As you say Moss, there may be disagrements and several ways to proceed. And even several good ways to obtain a same result : giving good formations making good tree climbers and above all obtaining solid recognition of the practice that could open autorisations by autorities to climb in public spots.

Making the same work at the same time would give each of us more strengh and legitimity. I would be so happy that such a thing would happen !

I see your time schedule and hope that all proceeds well.

You can join GoTreeClimbing.org commonly GOTC (http://www.gotreeclimbing.org/) and use as many documents as you like. Your fee of $25 is a small price to pay to see what they have printed.

Moss resigned from the GOTC as did I for much of the same reasons so I doubt that he would want to start up again. Your reference to Moss “bringing his balls” was humorous since “lot of balls” is an American phrase for a person with large testicles hence much bravado. Life’s languages are such joys sometimes.

There are some of us working on creating some lessons to help others start and grow their own recreational tree climbing business and encourage you in your efforts. So for now the best starting place is to create guidelines, Membership levels, class outlines, insurance and go meet people that have the authority to grant permission.

John Routon is known to say that you have to take those people aloft so they can see firsthand the joys so go “get their feet in the breeze” and good luck.

Dan

PS let me know if you need any of my rope sleeves that I make. https://www.treestuff.com/store/catalog.asp?category_id=0&item=1852

Oops cross post, i've edited mine because i thought that my explaination of our situation wasn't clear...

Thanks a lot for te GOTC reference, they are in our target line as we think that we have only two existing speakers to talk to, our federation and the GOTC.
For sure we'll spend some bucks to have a look.

I would be really glad to test one of these jewels you sell. I've just buy a leather sleeve at treestuff in fact but i'm really interested to have one of yours too.
We'll talk of it next month if you wich, right now my pockets are empty

Some possible additions to the skill levels:

Include skill levels for DRT and SRT proficiency in your rating system.

It might be that Levels 1 and 2 require DRT proficiency

Starting at Level 3 the climber should have basic SRT proficiency

Level 4, 5 and 6 should have advanced SRT proficiency and SRT rescue proficiency

-AJ

Sounds good !

But if we keep the way it is level 3 will have to be able to ensure level 2 security if needed, so SRT rescue would be interesting.
That means also L3 should have more than basics SRT proficiency.

We don't know for now how will be incorporated SRT for L2 but as domino effect L2 would have to preaper climbers to get ready to L3 SRT needs.

We are also thinking about making additional classes for developping L2 and L3 skills as the climber want. Like in diving systems : you got the comun level and if you wish you can learn deep dives, cave diving, nitrox, and so on. Some options are really important, others are more for personnal culture like local biodiversity, photography etc.
Maybe SRT basics could be an optionnal class for L2 and mandatory for L3.

But for sure L4/5/6 MUST be good climbers and rescuers wathever if it's in DRT DdRT or SRT.

Bradypus. Is good.....
Bradypus is motivated and full of energy

I thought you'd want to adjust where SRT fits in. Another option is to have a separate level system for DRT and SRT but I don't think it's a good idea. Better to bring them into the same levels where you think best.
-AJ

Indeed we will take care of it and i agree that it would be better in the general class than in an option.

You pointed a nice difficulty in our direction : risking to have a too heavy L2 or puting all SRT technics in L3... it's not an easy question.


NB Oli: your translator is still s****y what it says is total non sense