I’m dangling from a branch of a California live oak, looking down on the ground 40 feet below.
Technically, I climbed here, though not by shinnying up tree trunks and playing monkey bars across branches. This was a page out of the old arborists’ book, a straight vertical ascent using ropes and friction knots.
It’s part of a new ECO Tour offered by the Mount Hermon Adventure Center, a branch of the Mount Hermon organization that was founded in 1906 as the first Christian camp west of the Mississippi.
Today, the adventure center is best known for Redwood Canopy Tours – zip-lining – in the Santa Cruz Mountains, but since October, a new pair of educational programs has been added.
The four-hour ECO (Education. Conserve. Outdoors.) Tours grew out of courses that teach visiting fifth-graders about sustainable stewardship, says Suzy Clark, the director of Mount Hermon’s outdoor science school.
And it starts with a bird’s-eye view earned through tree climbing.
“There isn’t a recreational tree climbing program in California,” Clark says as she gathers her rope and harnesses, “so this is about getting the word out and showing people what an enjoyable experience it is.”
Indeed, a healthy sense of adventure is more important than physical strength. You’re clipped into a harness at all times, and it takes only a moderate amount of sweat to pull yourself up thanks to a rope system – and particularly, the Blake’s hitch knot – that uses friction and your body weight to ascend and descend.
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