Go climb a tree on Oregon outing

CAVE JUNCTION, Ore. — "You want to try a bat hang?" Tim asks and flips over in his harness. His feet point straight up.

We're about halfway up a 60-foot black walnut, dangling from a combination of ropes, knots and carabiners. Tim's been doing this for 13 years; I've been at it about 24 hours. What the heck. I flip.

Oregon is upside-down, and this, this is all the joy of childhood, of knobby knees thrown over a branch, of hair dangling toward the grass.

The view — even right side up — is worth the work it took to get here.

I'm high enough to see over the roof of the nearby house to where the blue-hued Siskiyou Mountains peek over a dark, jagged line of evergreen treetops. If I could turn a bit to my right, I might see Redwood Highway (U.S. 199), the main drag of this town, lined with drive-through espresso stands, burger joints and, as it disappears, family campgrounds that now house giant RVs.

Cave Junction is on the hot eastern side of Southern Oregon's coastal range. Visitors might come to the area to see Oregon Caves National Monument or to raft the wild Rogue River or to camp or hike in the endless acres of national forest or to spend the night in a treehouse, of which there are several in the area.

Tree Climbing Northwest

Tree Climbing Northwest, c/o New Tribe, 866-223-3371, www.treeclimbingnorthwest.com. Upcoming basic tree-climbing classes Friday-May 27, June 8-10, July 13-15; $450. There also are more classes later in the summer.

Where to stay

• Camping: There are several private campgrounds around Cave Junction, and Tree Climbing Northwest, aka Tim Kovar's yard, is sometimes available for pitching a tent or parking a camper.

• Erin Lodge, Cave Junction, Ore.; 888-593-4253 or www.erinlodge.com. B&B rooms in the owners' log home, plus a large lodge for groups and a treehouse. Rooms $65-$95. Treehouse $65-$110 (for four or more). Breakfast included.

• Out 'n' About Treesort, Takilma, Ore.; 541-592-2208 or www.treehouses.com. A collection of 10 treehouses run as a B&B; most sleep two to four adults, $110 to $220.

• Weasku Inn, Grants Pass, Ore.; 541-471-8000, www.weasku.com.About 30 miles north of Cave Junction, a traditional lodge with modern comforts. Also cabins on the Rogue River. $195 to $325.

Where to climb

• Recreational tree climbing — with ropes and harnesses — is a young sport. Peter Jenkins, an Atlanta tree surgeon, founded Tree Climbers International in 1983, and TCI's school in Atlanta is still the largest.

• Tree Climbers International, 404-377-3150, www.treeclimbing.com

• Tree Climbing Colorado, 303-526-2904, www.treeclimbingcolorado.com

• Dancing With Trees (Georgia) 706-778-8847, www.dancingwithtrees.com

Los Angeles Times and

Seattle Times travel staff

Me, I came to learn how to climb trees.

Meet Ed

I didn't really know what I was getting into when I enrolled in this basic tree-climbing course at the recently established Tree Climbing Northwest school. I meet Tim "Tengu" Kovar when I get to his house in this town of about 1,400. Tim's a big guy, 6 feet 3 inches, and exudes an easygoing warmth. He started climbing trees in 1993 while working for an Atlanta-area tree surgeon.

His boss, it turned out, was using arborists' techniques to take people up into trees for fun on the weekends. He recruited Tim as a teacher, and after a few years, Tim put down his chain saw for good. In 2005, he moved to Oregon and started his own school, Tree Climbing Northwest.

I've signed up for a 2-½-day session. There's a lot to learn; my only classmate, Karen, is staying a full week to be trained in two climbing styles, plus rigging hammocks and stuff. I'll just learn the basic doubled-rope technique. But before any lessons or quizzes, Tim takes us to meet Ed.

Ed is our other teacher: a 60-year-old black walnut tree with wide-spread limbs.

Branching out (and up)

I had imagined us deep in a forest, but in fact we're in the middle of a flat plain along the Illinois River. There's a farm/vineyard going to seed next door and a growing subdivision nearby. From Tim's, we walk down a dirt road and find ropes already in the tree.

We learn an easy first knot, the triple crown, which creates foot loops. Then we don helmets and harnesses that sort of resemble those used for rock climbing but are much sturdier and padded. Finally we secure our harnesses to loops in the ropes using locking O-ring carabiners, and start up.

Doubled rope technique is simple but magical. A long rope — 150 feet or so — is looped over a high branch. At one end is a loop (to attach to your harness) and a Blake's hitch, a knot that connects to the dangling half of the rope, called the downline. The Blake's hitch grips the downline almost like a powerful fist. The magic is that a Blake's hitch will slide upward, lock in place and release only when you pull down on the top of the knot.

Once everything is in place, we're not so much tree climbing as knot sliding. The strength is in your legs, not your arms.

Here's how it works: My foot loops and Blake's hitch are both attached to the downline. I stand up in the loops, slide the Blake's hitch upward, then sit back in my harness and the hitch holds me in place. So I slide my foot loops up farther, stand up and slide the hitch up again. Repeat until in the tree canopy.

Treetops of the world

Apparently there are people who climb trees competitively, racing up into the branches. But that whole conquer-the-tree mentality isn't Tim's thing; he's about reconnecting people with nature, one tree climber at a time.

Besides teaching, Tim leads scientific expeditions into the tree canopies around the world to study birds, reptiles, plants, whole ecosystems. He's climbed in Japan, in Panama and to the top of the fifth-largest tree in the world, a sequoia on private land in California. For Tim, treetops are nirvana.

On our second full day, while Karen and I practice, Tim rigs a hammock-like "tree boat" in Ed's boughs. It's for Karen's rigging lesson tomorrow, after I'm gone, but he asks if I want to try it out. Climbers like Tim will actually camp overnight like this in the treetops.

I'm about parallel with the tree boat, so I have to swing over, letting out just enough slack to reach it, but not drop below it. I get only my feet in and wind up dangling in a pose that is Cirque du Soleil gone bad. Tim grabs my feet from the other side and pulls me into the tree boat.

It's late in the day. The sun is coming through the feathery leaves of the black walnut. The harness isn't digging into my thighs. No rope is burning my hands. In a picture I see of myself later, I look giddy, red-faced. I'm grinning like an 8-year-old.

Too soon it's time to come down, and while it feels good to stand and walk, I feel undeniably earthbound.