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Piece of sky

This is the piece of sky I have opened up in our backyard cutting down one supermassive oak tree that came as a trippling.

Took down part three of the big triple oak in my backyard. It has been a long time that I have been that exhausted. Working in the blazing sun and using a manual saw to go through a 30 cm thick oak trunk while sitting in my double safety, but still standing inside of a tree6 somewhat awkwardly …. wow! every muscle in my body is still burning. The picture shows the trunk remaining. I had to sleep for an hour, take a large ice coffee, and did the trunk afterwards.

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The Oak Triplet – Part 2

It is Friday evening (Aug 2) and I receive a call from Seb reminding me that he is arriving in Boston at 1:30am Saturday morning that was just a few hours from now…. Yeah, he told me but I completely spaced out and did not tell Ana and did not think about it. Fine men can take those surprises, as we did not have anything special planned anyways, so my biggest problem problem was to lay this news on Ana.
Well, I succeeded because I did mention about 4 weeks ago that Seb would come, but of course Ana was upset that I did not tell her earlier, and rightly so. Anyways I got the bed for Seb prepared and was waiting for him while the whole house had gone to sleep. I enjoyed some nice LPs with a cigar and it was a really nice chillaxing lonely hours until Seb indeed arrived around 1:30am and he was in good spirits.
We listened to some music meanwhile exchanging news on what was going on. One big topic was Martin’s ordeal with Alex and how that is going to play out in the end. Sad story, and the kids will suffer from this. I remember my own split from my first wife and remember how bad that was for me, but not even close to what this will be. At least we did not have kids and there was no money involved, and both parties actually very reasonable. It was as simple as it can possible get but still I would describe it as the worst experience of my life. With no kids you can just cut all connections and forget about it, but not so with kids, you are going to be linked over the kids basically forever. Anyway, they will figure it out, we drank a beer chilled a little while listening to ‘The Cult’ and talked about the plan for Saturday. I told Seb about my plan to cut down the second triplet on this weekend and he thought it was a great idea and said that it would be a great thing to do together.


Seb's cut.

Seb taking down the first limb.
It is a video (~150 MB).

We kind of collapsed around 3:30am and hit the hay. In the morning Seb was up pretty early and we both grabbed the kids and took them to Jam’n Java while Ana had the house to herself. When we got back we started to get ready for the second oak triplet. Seb was all gung-ho put on the climbing belt and ventured into the tree not without showing me his cool technique to automatically forward the ascenders 🙂
After some professional re-crotching he got started to rig the first branch. After all was prepared it was time to cut, and cut he did. The branch broke off but fell into one of the next trees and got stuck. Seb fixed that and finally the branch came down nicely dangling on the rigging rope. Seb used the ballay device and he was able to control the decent well. Meanwhile he had broke a sweat and was also complaining about his calf muscle that he had injured a few weeks back. So after the first branch he had to come down and I took over. The remaining pieces were done rather quickly after I figured out the rigging, while Seb was entertaining Ana and the kids and meanwhile cut up the big trunk I left the weekend before. He even created some art: a nice block of oak wood to expose some beautiful pieces or as a piece of art by itself. I might create a few more and also put some finishing touches on them to make the surface nice.
Later we had to quickly pick up Seb suites he left in the hotel in Winchester when he arrived a week ago and forgot there when he left for San Francisco. In the evening I dropped him off for the 10pm flight to Zuerich. It was a great day, good to see my brother and work with him, even better.

Two down. Last one standing.Two down. Last one standing.
Last triplet standing, lots of wood on the ground.
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The Oak Triplet – Part 1

1st Ascend
My first tree ascend (single rope technique).
It is a video (145 MB).

So, here we are, the equipment has just been bought, I have watched the youtube tutorials on how to ascend and even on how to change to descending mode even when the rope is under tension…. not that easy to figure out when you are dangling up there. First move was to get the rope up there into the easiest of the three oaks. The throwing went pretty smoothly the rope was quickly in a good position and tied to the trunk. Ready to ascend! Before I went up I did do a little test run at about half a meter above the ground. I had some issues and had to try again. The second time I was able to ascend and to return to descending and I felt comfortable enough to go up. My climbing buddy (Ana) had the video camera ready and there it is my first ascend. Once you are well beyond 5 m there is no turning back, it is kind of scary to just rely on the thin rope, but it works like a charm.

Once I was up there it was important to get well into the tree from the rope which actually was fairly straight forward. I quickly employed my second safety putting a sling around the trunk and hooking that into my climbing belt. The first oak is well separated from the house and even the patio so there was little to no danger to destroy anything but the ground in the garden, that is not in great shape anyway. So the happy cutting started and branch by branch went down under close observation of my buddy. It was surprisingly smooth, I was somewhat uneasily thinking about the moment when I had to go down, again relying on the rope and my descending skills.

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The Tree Project – Equipment

In December 2011 we got ourselves finally organized and fixed the roof, which was direly needed as the last winter had left us with a number of ice dams and some damage inside…. It was an amazingly mild December I remember and we got the roofers to come, and we did not forget about a new skylight either. Now with the summer in full swing I was watching the roof not getting a lot of sun on the backside and the trees leaving lots of droppings. So finally on July 28, I decided it had to be done and I bought the basic equipment at REI. I bought a harness for rock climbing (not ideal as I found out later), a nice static rope, two nice ascender devices (Petzl), an ballay device (ATS), a number of slings and carabiners.
I also added two reasonably cheap nylon ropes, a thin rope for a rope throwing setup, a simple handsaw and of course a set of excellent quality working gloves (very important!). Ready I was for my first ascend…. Well, I had to watch some tutorials on the web to make sure I could properly ascend and descend with the equipment I bought. Fun, fun… first try was with single rope technique (SRT) and full ascend and descend routine at about 1 meter over the ground 🙂 It worked at the second try.
One thing to always remember: be calm, move at a slow but steady pace and think carefully about what you are doing. Usually once one is up there it is very quick to cut the branch, what takes most time is to position and secure oneself and the pieces to be cut off. Once int he tree, always use two safeties, one is not enough.

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Soccer – Football

Played football today, the first time since a longer break (is it 10 years already?).


It was fun and I am not that slow, at least not before I pulled my hamstring….. Will have to take a few days break.