How to Climb Trees Without Branches

Description

This is a tree climbing technique based on a skill some people use to scale coconut trees. In the north, it allows you to move up branchless trunks. I've also included a woods-game that sharpens your climbing, endurance, strength, and awareness skills.

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Tags: Kenton Whitman,ReWild University,Human Rewilding,personal rewilding,mindfulness,how to,bushcraft,survival,wilderness survival skills,how to survive in the woods,tree climbing,how to climb trees

Video Transcription

on the reweld university campus we have a lot of older growth trees and they create a shade canopy so that young trees have to grow really tall and strength in order to try to reach for the Sun so a lot of people look at a tree like this and will say there's no way that can be climbed but today I'm going to show you a method for climbing young straight trees that have no branches on them now it does take a little bit of physical conditioning you have to build some hand strength and some forearm strength in order to use this technique but a lot of the technique is just the way that you place your body on the tree I'm also going to briefly mention a woods game that we play out here with students because it it's a great way to bring tree climbing into your life and it's it works great with two players here's what you do you imagine that one of you is a wild monster Pig the other person is the one that's going to run away from the play from the runner I have a set time let's say 10 seconds you two are walking through the woods Pig anytime they want shouts Pig and then starts to count to ten the other person runs for a tree tries to climb it while Pig stands still as soon as Pig reaches ten Pig runs to the person and tries to jump up and touch their foot if they touch their foot they ate them if they can't touch the foot then the climber wins you come down you switch positions and start walking through the woods and the new Pig will choose at whatever time here he wants to call out Pig

and start that race again this game is a strength building exercise it's also an endurance building exercise and it strengthens your awareness because it keeps your focus out around your environment watching for trees that you could possibly climb to climb these trees first thing you want to do is just put your hands round the trunk and then put a foot up and what you're doing is you're leaning back against your arms and you're just allowing your feet to hold you in the tree that's the basic training position to start to condition yourself to be able to do this so when people start out I just tell them hold onto the tree and put one foot up and then if you just can bring that other foot up a little bit off the ground you might not be able to see it in the video I'm just lifting that one foot slightly off the ground and seeing if I can support myself

and that's going to allow me to start to build some of the strength necessary as you're doing this as soon as you go up you might find that you whoa you twist around the tree every tree is going to have a lean point and if you've chosen that incorrectly this one has a strong lean that way so if I get up here and I try to go I might be able to hold myself but whoa-ohh might also swing around and you're going to tend to lose your your grip when you sing around so the first thing is to try to gauge on that tree where that lean point is the big trick to this is that if I go up and my feet are down below me they start to slip in the I slit so I can keep my feet close to my hands relatively so I'm going to have a nice nice strong like base there that's going to allow me to climb so I'm walking my feet up walking my hands up not letting my feet get too far behind or they slip and down I go this one's really a challenging one because it has nothing to grab onto sometimes trees we're gonna have a little you know little places where there's Gnarls or branches have been broken off that's going to be a lot easier this is a hickory it's growing really tall and straight but this technique is still going to work you

here's a much better tree to start on because it's not as wide diameter my hands can really get around it and that allows the forearm muscles to engage more this one has also a lot of little things to grab on to to help with the climbing so this would be an ideal one to start your climbing practice with get one foot up try to get the other foot and you can just sit there you can sit down into it if you want or you can rise up into it a little bit there my body is getting the swing point I guess it's around here and then you can start to climb

as you start out choose your trees carefully this one really big diameter not a good one to start on this was the ideal nice diameter lots of little toehold

this would be another nice one it's a good diameter and it has a rough bark so your feet are really going to be able to grab onto it this is that Hickory that I was at in the beginning these are so smooth that they are really really challenging a quick bonus skill another way to train with this to make it a little bit easier and another way to quickly get up some trees is to find true trees that grow just like this close together this allows you to get your hands on and because your feet are out further it just it's a lot easy these go very very quickly thanks for watching let me know if you give this tree climbing method to try and tell me about some of your adventures with it in the comments may your day be adventurous