World's Greatest Tree Climbers Compete Head To Head

Certain people in life seem to find themselves driven to climb things. It just happens. There's rock climbers and tree climbers, and just people that climb their fridge as kids. But not a lot of people realize that you can climb for a living. When you look at a tree in your yard or on the side of the road, it's just a tree, until something has to be done to it. An arborist, by definition, is someone who's been trained in the care and maintenance of trees. All of the people participating in our event today are professional arborists. The people that we've brought here are masters of that craft. It's both an art, a sport, and a science. We have to be quite fluent with biology, insects, and diseases. We have to be quite athletic to be able to handle five days a week of this grind. And it's an art, because trees have form and architecture, and we have to work within that, obviously, to make them shine. This event really highlights and requires the skills that these arborists have built over a lifetime. King of the Canopy, being the first competition of its kind anywhere in the world, has drawn a really diverse field. I'm from Sweden. New Jersey. Maui, Hawaii. San Francisco. I'm from Montreal, Quebec. Charlotte, North Carolina. Douglasville, Georgia. Madison, Wisconsin. I came 16 hours for this. I'm having a blast. This competition is like no other competition I've ever gone to. This is really advanced climbing we're doing out here this weekend. Like, epic. King of the Canopy, baby! This is what it's all about! What King of the Canopy is, is it's most likened to capture the flag, but done at the tops of the trees. Teams of four professional tree climbers from all around the world have come and joined us here in Durham, North Carolina. Our team name is Silky Scar Tissue. Game of Throws. Team Heartwood. We're gonna come back! Notre Equipe, c'est la French Touch. The A Team. Dark Gypsy Magic. We're Alder Kingsmen, it's just kind of a play on words. If you're not aware, an alder is a type of tree. They face off directly against another team, competing simultaneously. 3, 2, 1, go! Woo! Let's get it on! They rush into the court and take their respective sides. They take tokens, like this, up into the tree with them, and then they will go ahead and place the token around a tree branch. They have between 6 and 9 minutes to place between 5 and 7 tokens in the treetops, as in a difficult placement as they can. A round switch is called. The teams rush out of the trees, rush across the line, and into the opposing trees. Whichever team can remove the other team's tokens the fastest is the winner. At the end of this competition, somebody's going to be crowned King of the Canopy. The biggest difference here versus any other comp I've been to is the go, go, go push. The endurance level is very tough. It's just non-stop. Round after round after round, just going all out. And the competition is turning quite serious. These guys, they push it to the limit, and they leave it all on the line. Yeah, baby! Yeah, baby! The act of setting the tokens is quite athletic. Once the climber gets their equipment onto the rope, the climber will access the tree as quickly as they can. Once they get in, they're required to set up their own climbing systems. They set their system as high as they can so that they can get the best angle in the tree to access the farthest reaches and the tips. Once they've set that system, usually the climber will begin to descend and moving out laterally throughout the trees. These climbers have to have a lot of core strength, a lot of balance, and a lot of situational awareness. It also requires a lot of planning and strategy. Tree work is hard, but every time you get up in a tree, move around, the tree talks to you and settles you down, and you just feel great. The feeling you get up there is freedom, and it's an amazing, amazing feeling. All your troubles go away, and you just focus on the tree, and you're one with nature, and you're climbing around, and you're having fun, and you're getting paid doing it, and it's like being a unicorn. This is by far the hardest competition I've ever done. You meet a lot of people, learn a lot, so that's by far my favorite part of coming to events like this. It's kind of like we're one big old family. When I go to different events and different places, it always feels like I'm coming home. I'm always traveling home because I'm always with my family. I'm always with my tree peeps. The tree family. It's the man hugs, the high fives, the knuckle bumps. It's a family deal. It's nothing but hugs and love and camaraderie. It's awesome. I love these guys. The coveted cape. Some people win belts and trophies. It's kind of almost about the cape. It's totally about the cape. Oh, amazing amounts of fun. We love to work and make money, and then we want to beat ourselves up and go pay to compete and beat ourselves up some more just because we love what we do so much, and it's a great time.