Don't climb the fucking trees.... Don't be a dick!

People are flying across the world to illegally climb California's redwoods

Redwood National and State Parks is cracking down on 'ninja climbs'

By Ashley Harrell

On an overcast day in May 2022, a group of men climbed to the top of Hyperion, a 380-foot tree that is currently the tallest in the world.

When their leader, Simeon Balsam, reached the crown, he and another climber drank a cup of tea. “What absolute legends,” Balsam said from behind a camera trained on the beaming group of climbers.

Balsam documented the adventure with his crew in an hourlong film that was posted to YouTube. It’s a braggadocious watch, full of self-satisfied narration, fist-bumping and inspirational house music — and also proof of illegal activity.

According to the film, the 11 men spent months planning the trip within Redwood National and State Parks and accumulating gear before flying from the United Kingdom to California to climb Hyperion and other old-growth redwoods. 

However, the group did not obtain required permits. Furthermore, they climbed into an ecologically sensitive habitat during the breeding season of threatened marbled murrelets, which nest in the redwood canopy, according to park officials and court documents obtained by SFGATE. They were also caught in the act of climbing six redwoods in Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park — where they strung up a zip line and a rope swing over a riverbed — a similarly illegal venture.

Balsam and his group aren’t the only ones to have illegally scaled the national park’s redwoods. In fact, they are members of a subculture of tree maintenance workers — also known as arborists — who in recent years have increasingly utilized their equipment and skills for recreational (and oftentimes unauthorized) climbs. It’s tough to tell just how widespread the problem is, as in many cases these “tree poachers” do not get caught. But Redwood National and State Parks officials told SFGATE that in the past five years, more and more arborists have found their way into the delicate canopies of the park’s keystone species.   

Although arborists claim to love trees, they also feel entitled to shoot lines into the trees with crossbows and climb on up, snapping bark and branches and disrupting the rare canopy ecosystem along the way. In Redwood National and State Parks, arborists have left gear, trash and damaged trees behind, according to chief ranger Stephen Troy. They’ve also been caught — and cited — based on information they themselves have shared on social media about their exploits. 

Officials are now using surveillance techniques to identify lawbreakers, and they hope that strict enforcement and new penalties — including a $5,000 fine and six months jail time — will be a deterrent. But they have their work cut out for them. 

“People want to climb the biggest trees out there,” Balsam told SFGATE in a WhatsApp voice memo. “You’ll never stop people from wanting to venture into these canopies.”

An ecosystem unlike any other

To understand why it’s so appalling that people would travel across the world and climb California’s protected redwoods, it helps to have some background.   

The world’s tallest trees can live longer than 2,000 years, and reach heights of more than 300 feet, rivaling the Statue of Liberty. For the Indigenous people whose ancestral territory included California’s redwood forests, the trees are considered sacred beings. Redwood trunks were used to build dugout canoes and housing materials only after they had fallen.

When white settlers began arriving in the region in the mid-1800s, old growth forests spanned 2 million acres in southern Oregon and California. The newcomers brought destruction: Soon, the region’s timber industry became the country’s largest, and commercial logging operations clear cut 95% of the redwood forest before conservationists could intervene. At last, in the 1960s, they began saving the last of the majestic trees with the creation of a few national, state and local parks.

Then, in the late 1990s, 23-year-old Julia Butterfly Hill climbed 180 feet into a redwood and stayed up there for 738 days to prevent its felling. Pacific Lumber Company agreed to spare the tree and surrounding forest. Around the same time, the world’s foremost redwood scientist Stephen Sillett and other daring botanists were also climbing into redwoods using self-taught methods for the purpose of studying the canopy — and making ground-breaking discoveries.

They learned that the redwood canopy is essentially its own ecosystem, supporting a multitude of ferns, shrubs and even other trees. (Yes, there are entire trees growing within the canopy of old-growth redwoods.) The vertical habitat also supports other creatures like insects, mushrooms, birds, flying squirrels and tree voles, and serves as the breeding grounds for marbled murrelets, which are federally listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. 

The enigmatic, potato-shaped seabirds travel up to 50 miles from their marine foraging areas to nest in the moss-draped canopy of old-growth forests. Each breeding pair produces a single egg each year, and relies on the height and stability of the tree to protect it. Their population remains in decline, and scientists now know that disturbances to the nesting environment have been a big part of the problem.

In 2007, author Richard Preston released his book “The Wild Trees: A Story of Passion and Daring,” which tells the riveting story of the scientists’ ascents and discoveries. It immediately piqued the public’s interest in the tallest of the tall trees. Some readers became obsessed with seeking out Hyperion and other famous named trees. Soon enough, brazen arborists were climbing the redwoods and posting the celebratory videos online, fancying their ascents as acts of appreciation akin to the scientists’ research. 

To climb or not to climb

In 2010, a visitor from the Oxford Botanic Garden and Arboretum at the University of Oxford obtained a permit to collect seeds in Redwood National and State Parks. Although his permit didn’t allow for any tree climbing, he ascended Hyperion and posted a video of his illegal climb online.

“That’s when I first realized there was going to be a problem,” Redwood National Park Deputy Superintendent Leonel Arguello told SFGATE.

Park officials didn’t take legal action against the seed collector as he had already gone back to the U.K. But they did ban him from the parks, and they sent a letter to Oxford Botanic Gardens and Arboretum explaining what happened, according to Arguello. They also stopped granting permits for seed collection to the organization.

Other illicit redwood climbs were soon to follow, however. Preston’s book — along with a few others that came out around that time — essentially opened Pandora’s box, said Tim Kovar, an Oregon-based tree climbing instructor who runs the world’s only legal redwood climbing operation. Kovar offers just one redwood climb in California, for nine days a year. The first group went up in 2014, but he wrestled with the moral dilemma of the operation for years before that.

Outside Magazine once called Kovar the world’s best tree climber, and he leads climbing expeditions to more than a dozen countries, including India, Brazil and Costa Rica. His company, Tree Climbing Planet, is based on 150 acres of oak savanna and mixed conifer forest just outside of Portland, where aspiring climbers enroll in courses like basic tree climbing, tree top camping and aerial rescue.

After “The Wild Trees” came out, Kovar’s inbox started filling with inquiries about climbing the world’s tallest trees.

“It got to the point where we would see ‘redwood climbing’ in the subject line and just go ‘delete, delete, delete,’” Kovar said. “We didn’t want to promote climbing redwood trees, because of the delicate situation out there.”