・Tree Climbing
Hi, my name is Hibiki and I’m doing an internship at Evergreen Outdoor Center in Hakuba. On June 17th and 18th, Evergreen ran some tree climbing at the Hakuba Craft Beer Festival.
Tree climbing originated in the US, and tree climbing uses a rope, a harness, carabiner, a foot loop, and break’s hitch. We attached ropes on branches, and the climbers were attached to the rope with a harness and a carabiner. Foot loops are a loop of a string that is tied to the rope by prusik knot. Prusik knots can be slid when they are loosened, and they don’t move when they get tied tightly. Climbers put their foot on a foot loop and stand up on it to climb. Break’s hitch is a knot for tree climbing, and you can move the hitch from bottom to top. However, after you move the hitch from bottom to the top little bit, the hitch works as a stopper and locks up the rope. The series of motions for tree climbing are to put your foot in the foot loop, stand up on it, move the break’s hitch from bottom to the top, and slide the foot loop a little bit. You can climb a tree by doing these series of motions again and again.
It was actually my first time to do tree climbing, and I realized two things from this experience. One thing is that you can feel achievement after you do tree climbing. I thought before I climbed that it looked impossible to climb up to the top of the rope. It was not difficult to climb up to the top, and after I descended from the tree, I thought that “I made it to the top.” Therefore, although it was not hard, I felt a lot of achievement after I did it. The other thing is the beautiful scenery from the top of the tree. The highest point was about 8 meters, and there was nothing to block the view, so I saw 360 degrees of the beautiful scenery at the highest point that I could climb. I thought that tree climbing gives us a natural observatory when you climb up.
During the two days, we had a lot of customers of tree climbing, and they all had so much fun and enjoyed the view from the tree.
Evergreen offers experiential sessions of tree climbing at some events, so if you are interested in inviting us to do the tree climbing session, please let us know!
Hibiki