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TreeXP is a safe place for Recreational Tree Climbers and others who are enthusiastic and excited about connecting with Nature. This site recognizes the sport of tree climbing and serves to unite and inform recreational tree climbers who prefer to climb in a non-invasive manner.

TreeXP offers professional recreational tree climbing consulting services and promotes the sport of tree climbing as a way to improve oneself, both physically and spiritually.

Tree climbing is a great form of exercise, creating harmony and focus between body and mind. Tree climbing is as much spiritual as it is physical and technical. Just being in the presence of trees and nature’s abundance, while exercising your body and mind is immensely gratifying. Knowing how to responsibly climb trees is like being a proficiently skilled caver, mountain climber, rock climber, or any number of at-height occupations that require tactical awareness. Feeling the exhilaration of nature from high in the air, inside an old-growth tree canopy does transform an individual.

Our planet’s precious resources are a vital part of our existence. For the benefit of our environment and all living beings, I promote tree climbing as a way for us to better connect with Mother Earth.

  • Tree Climbing 101

    Obtaining professional tree-climbing instruction is recommended for anyone and everyone, who wants to learn how to safely climb trees. Learning how to identify hazards and understanding the risk is mission-critical. Reading about it, or watching videos is no substitute for the real deal. Climb at your own risk.

Getting the climbing line into the tree is the first objective. Hand-throwing a weighted throw-bag, tied to a string, or by using an oversized sling shot, known as a Big Shot, to shoot a weighted throw-bag tied to a light weight throw line over a secure branch and then by feeding the rope into the tree, is how it’s usually done. Trees like Redwoods, may require a more powerful launching device, like a crossbow, an airgun, or even with the use of a drone.

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TreeXP is currently offering recreational tree climbing consulting services. We provide climbing demonstrations and openly discuss various aspects of tree climbing. In the near future, we hope to offer tree climbing training courses for beginning, intermediate and advanced climbers, as one-day or half-day excursions. At a minimum, with proper basic instruction, equipment and training, we will enable a student to safely and securely climb up and down from a tree. We will employ facilitators and climbing instructors, well trained in the use of proper climbing, rescue and assisted climbing methods. Our trainers will have many available tools to aid the climbers, including an optional counter-balance system to provide climbers with an elevator-like lift to reach the canopy, requiring far less effort and lots more time to really enjoy the overall experience.

As you read the articles posted on our site’s blog and other related information, we hope you’ll become more familiar with Recreational Tree Climbing. If you are already an experienced rock-climber, than perhaps you are familiar with many of the tree-climbing components. Tree climbing offers us an objective reality that challenges oneself to connect directly with a real, multi-dimensional living beings who support a vast array of other symbiotically inter-connected life forms. We as climbers rely primarily on climbing lines that we mindfully connect to limbs with a life-bearing load capacities, while incorporating non-invasive climbing techniques to preserve our environment and protect our precious ecosystems.

All are welcome here, so please come join us for a taste of the TreeXP’erience.

Sincerely,
John Greer / Admin

About

TreeXP acknowledges Recreational Tree Climbing as a sport. Using non-invasive climbing techniques and appropriate climbing gear, a climber is able to ascend and descend to and from the tree canopy, as well as, traverse from tree to tree. Like coral reefs, tree canopies are full of life and incredible beauty. Recreational tree climbing is similar to rock climbing, but instead of depending on a rock wall for support, tree climbers are connected to living beings, by way of a climbing line.

John Gathright’s pioneering work, along with others who recognize and promote non-invasive tree climbing not only as a form of physical therapy and recreation, but as a way to connect with and be one with nature in a deeply fulfilling spiritual sense, are true inspirations for everyone. John’s ongoing efforts are helping many young adults with physical challenges get into trees. He has also proven through scientific research, the positive physiological changes that occur in our bodies while we actually climb trees.

http://www.americanforests.org/magazine/article/treehab-the-healing-power-of-tree-climbing/e.

Thanks for being a part of nature and one with all, including our most precious resources, our trees.

TreeXP

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Nature is our objective reality and we need only embrace it to become better balanced, centered and focused as individuals. Our very lives depend on our ability to harmonize with nature and become one with our greater collective.

Things to do in trees may include:

Tree Climbing
Recreational tree climbing introductions are to be offered by TreeXP as a one-day or half-day excursion with enough basic instruction and training to safely get a student up and down from large tree. Facilitators and trainers will have many available tools to aid the climbers, including an optional counter-balance system to provide climbers with an elevator-like lift to reach the canopy, requiring far less effort and lots more time to really enjoy the overall experience. … Continue

Hammocks
Hammocks are excellent for relaxation, meditation, and sleep. Hammock camping is favorable, when compared to other ground-based camping options. Being above ground, one avoids things like a cold damp ground, bugs, bumpy or uneven surfaces. Optional bug netting, wind and rain cover protection, provides a compact, lightweight camping alternative…. Continue

Aerial Yoga
Aerial yoga is an emerging sport, usually taking place in health clubs and yoga ashrams. There are two types of aerial yoga devices, one being a yoga-swing with three handles on each side and the other being a yoga-hammock, made from super strong and stretchy silk-nylon fabric. Both the yoga-swing and the yoga-hammock offers the practitioner an ability to achieve inverted positions, thereby using the effects of gravity which freely provides an vast array of benefits that go beyond those offered in traditional yoga classes. … Continue

Swings
Everyone loves to play on swings, especially tree-swings. Adding the tree to the swing equation gives one a greater sense of being at-one with or a part of the tree itself and a great rush of exhilaration. The higher the tie-in-point, the greater the rush. … Continue

Slackline
Slacklines are tied between two connection points, including trees. They provide a challenging method for one to achieve balance. While slacklining is being taken to extreme heights and unimaginable places, there’s a gentleness and beauty which comes from those who are able to master this skill.

For beginners, especially: Start low and slow. … Continue

 

Eco-Restoration

This Redwood tree seed was released by a seed-cone.

This Redwood tree seed was released by a seed-cone.

Eco-Restoration projects are TreeXP’s primary focus, from a philanthropic standpoint. Guided expeditions to collect seed cones or tree samples for cloning, planting expeditions and nature walks to learn about edible and medicinal plants are a few ways we can connect with nature.

Nature is our objective reality and if we simply embrace this fact, we’ll become better balanced, centered and focused as individuals. Our very lives depend on our ability to harmonize with nature and become one with our greater collective.

We’ve recklessly taken so much from nature and unless we are able to achieve sustainability to achieve and restore balance, as many indigenous people have done for eons, mankind will not survive in an environment that fails to adequately replenish its resources.

Lélia and Sebastião Salgado, recently featured in the 2014 blockbuster documentary, Salt of the Earth, have worked since the 1990s on the restoration of a small part of the Atlantic Forest in Brazil. In 1998, they succeeded in turning this land into a nature reserve and created the Instituto Terra. The Instituto is dedicated to a mission of reforestation, conservation and environmental education. The achievements of the Instituto have established a proven case-model, showing how over farmed and over ranched land can be restored, thereby promoting the return of waterfalls, ponds, streams and wildlife.

The team at Archangel Ancient Tree Archive, recently completed a project with a handful of experienced tree-climbers from Bartlett Arborist Supply, who climbed Coastal Redwood Trees and Sequoias, in an effort to collect and clone trees, to be planted in Oregon and Washington. They’re building living libraries of old-growth tree genetics by cloning these old growth trees through traditional and advanced horticultural propagation for the purpose of future research and functional reforestation.

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My Ideal 2-in-1 Climbing Lanyard, with the DMM Captain Throwing Hook

Climbing lanyards are a highly personal thing and there’s no perfect solution for all climbers in every environment. It’s more about personal preference, using whatever rocks your boat and fulfills your climbing objectives. I’ve come up a number of various lanyard systems based on what I want to do, how I am going to do …