Vacation for a tree-hugger

October 16, 2010.
Taking Tree-Hugging to New Heights
An ultra green resort where you can climb a tree and spend the night dangling up in the air. Whether you sleep tight or make like a night owl is up to you.
By BENJAMIN PERCY

I am dangling 100 feet in the air. The only thing that keeps me from plummeting to the forest floor is a braided nylon rope as wide around as my finger. It is anchored to the top of a 500-year-old, 250-foot Douglas fir, a tree that travelers can scale and spend the night in swinging from a hammock.

The tree—one of the tallest in the country—is nicknamed Fuzzy for the moss and lichen that beard its branches. Each battered plate of bark is the size of a dinosaur's scale, some of them scorched from a long-ago fire. The tree has lived and twisted upward since before Columbus spied our eastern shores with his telescope. The tree rules the forest, the tallest in this river valley, and to climb its branches is to feel like a child perched on his grandfather's shoulders, at once delighted and a little fearful.

Who climbs trees, my friends and family wonder, besides primates and 12-year-old boys? Plenty of people. These past few years, tree-climbing—which borrows its techniques and equipment from caving and rock-climbing—has become a vacation destination due to some strange combination of childish nostalgia, eco-awareness and an appreciation of the spider-like thrill of swinging from ropes.

Located an hour's drive from Eugene, Ore., deep in the Fall Creek wilderness area, the Pacific Tree Climbing Institute is the only outfitter in the country that legally climbs with Forest Service permits. The institute is run by Rob Miron and Jason Suppa, both of whom spend most of their lives up in the air, leading tree climbs and working as arborists.



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