SRT Day 1

Today was day 1 of my SRT class. SRT is "Single Rope Technique", and is a style of climbing that's used more in taller trees, and tends to have more equipment.

One other student from LA (Dennis) and I were instructed by Tim Kovar, from TCI (Tree Climbers International). The climbing world is still pretty small, especially at an instructor level, and this means that a pion like me can still be instructed by one of the most knowledgeable tree climbers in the world.

Tim (our instructor) just got back from the Amazon. He's climbed and guided everywhere. Here's a link from a Forbes Magazine article that features him prominently: Climbing the Amazon .

Dennis and I both have a fair amount of experience "on rope", so we got to move ahead a bit quickly. We started the day sitting out in a beautiful Oak Grove (with other trees as well) just south of Oregon City, on a large expanse of private property. It was a bit of dusty off-roading to get to the trees, so it was a good thing I had my Suburban. Plus, it could hold all my gear and still have room for me to stretch out an nap at lunch!

Anyway, we spent the morning going over equipment, discussing trees, and doing a lot of safety review. After that we practiced throwing lines into trees and then set our ropes. He had gear there, but let us use our own gear, also.

We practiced ascending for 10 feet or so, and then changing over to descenders of various types (Grigri's, Petzel I'D's, Piranhas). He focused a lot on placement and other pointers that you just can only get from someone who has done this as much as he has. After that, we climbed higher and practiced limb walking and refining our descent / rappel techniques.

At the end we moved over to another tree (we are climbing big Oaks) and set a line and did another climb, with him watching again. I was fairly tired at this point, and my skills completely fell apart.

All-in-all it was an excellent but very tiring day! I learned a lot!

The pictures: the top one shows the tree we mostly trained in today (I forgot her name). The trees are in open pasture, and we had to contend with cows and horses invading our site. At one point (while the other two were at lunch) I had to try to shoo away 5 horses who were messing around with my ropes and things. So, the second picture shows some of the horses at our site.