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Trees and Training

I can hear James screaming– ‘It’s scaaareeey’. I like the way he deals with his fear - like a schoolgirl in the playground. He lets it all out … often. I can’t see him but I can hear the movement ahead of me: The rustling of leaves and, thankfully, no sound of heavy thudding. ‘Which way do I go?’ I ask anxiously. ‘You just have to step through the leaves. You’ll be fine. There’s something to put your foot on. But it’s very scary.’ Thanks, that’s a great confidence builder.

My experienced climbing friends say a climbing wall is for training – it’s not real climbing. It’s there to keep up stamina and strength. But global warming has cocked up the weather so much that I seem destined to spend too much time there. It’s smelly, hot and the music is too loud. I endure it, as there’s not much option.

‘Training’ is a bit too serious a word for me - smacks of boot camp. And if you believe all Neil Gresham says then a serious approach is needed. There’s a routine to follow, weaknesses to overcome. Nah – my approach is go with the flow. Sometimes it’s just a social event and I climb the routes I like (my favourite colour is blue), sometimes I feel thuggy and have a go at the overhangs; sometimes I’m sensible - starting low, slowing working my way up the grades and finishing with a warm down low.

But I’d much rather be outside. And I’ve discovered a new sort of training for those days when the weather’s OKish but I can’t get out to the crag for a day. It only needs an hour or two. Tree traversing. I say ‘traversing’ rather than ‘climbing’ because it’s not really ‘up’, it’s through trees (in plural). The idea is to see how far you can get without touching the ground. There are no ropes involved, and in summer there’s lots of leaves in the way.

It could be done in a solitary fashion, but it’s much more fun with a few others – one person can ‘lead’, which is where James comes in. So I send him up the first stand of hazel (young and whippy stems) and then it’s a matter of watching to see how he copes – and ignoring the screaming as, knees wrapped around the leaning narrow trunk, he stretches out a hand to the branch on the next tree, while gingerly putting his foot on to the one below it. Then, it’s a matter of ‘follow your leader’.

It’s good training, requiring all-over strength and suppleness and it also challenges your reactions. And it adds something radical to the mix – the movement of the thing you’re climbing on. Drastically different from the inanimate crag (we don’t like the bits that move do we?), here you work with the movement - try to second-guess how far the thing you’re about to put your weight on will move. And if you’re wrong, well that’s when instinctive reactions seem to kick in (proving we were once all living in the trees).

The safety tip is to always have each hand and each foot on a different branch, and to steer clear of anything dead looking. How far you are above ground level really depends on you – and the arrangement of branches ahead, and sometimes it’s just not possible to see below. Choose younger trees (they’re more pliable) and have a look first to see how your route could progress through the wood. The closer the trees are, the better.

It involves big moves, bridging like you’ve never experienced it before, shinning up and down and an occasional spell of hanging upside-down. This monkey-like activity has improved my climbing and confidence. Having to think about place and movement has given me an extra awareness of how to move my body to ‘solve the problem’. And above all it’s FUN and doesn’t seem like ‘training’ at all.

Posted by fishinwater