Liriope's Muse: The Dangers of Using Dirty Equipment - Tree Climbing Spurs

Tree climbing spurs or 'climbers' are spurs that some tree climbers use to scale or climb a tree quickly and with stability. These spurs are strapped to the climber's leg and located on the inner sides of each foot.

As you can imagine, using spurs to climb a tree is very injurious. With each step, the climber stabs the blade into the tree to hoist themselves up and in doing so they gouge chunks out of the tree. These holes or wounds left behind are called gaffs. Most climbers will take 6-12 inch steps on their ascent and again on their descent. Now imagine they are climbing a 50-foot pine tree... that is an average of at least 4 gaffs a foot. Meaning for a simple pruning job, a tree can sustain more than 200 wounds. To add insult to injury, these wounds not only provide an open door to pests like borer beetles to enter the tree, but

the spurs come into direct contact with the flesh of the tree so it is easy to pick up and spread disease. 

Our master arborist, Eric Putnam, was called out to assess the health of a customer's tree and while surveying the tree he noticed previous gaff marks which led him to further investigate the other trees in their yard. Upon inspection, Eric found this oak tree (pictured above) seeming to be suffering from Phytophthora Ramorum, better known as the "sudden oak death'' in the tree community. This tree was inoculated or infected with this tree-killing disease when another tree crew used dirty spurs to climb it during a routine tree pruning. The spurs penetrated the Oaks bark reaching its inner bark/flesh spreading the disease across this unsuspecting healthy tree. Unfortunately, this Oak will shortly succumb to its infection as there is no cure for it and it is only a matter of time before the other trees in this yard that were climbed in this heinous way will too succumb to this infection.

Using 'dirty' or unsanitary equipment when working on trees is a biohazard as is using a dirty needle to start an IV. Dirty equipment can spread all kinds of hazardous infections, diseases, and fungi that can weaken and even kill your trees. In this case, a harmless tree pruning led to the death of this healthy and beautiful Oak tree. 

How can we prevent the spread of infections from tree to tree? The answer is simple, all equipment must be sterilized between each tree. Taking a few minutes to sterilize your equipment is crucial to ensure diseases are not being spread. 

All this said, tree climbing spurs can be a great tool for climbers to safely and efficiently climb a tree when the tree is either being removed or already dead. These spurs should never be used on healthy living trees.