It's a long way up
- 26 Feb 08, 10:15 AM
After a long boat ride the river was becoming narrower and Philippe guided us to a small encampment. From here we hiked for 40 minutes into the jungle and arrived at an enormous tree stretching high up through the canopy. This was to be our platform for filming shots of the jungle from above the canopy.
Matt starts his ascent up a tree, complete with kit...
The ropes had already been rigged so the first thing was to pull the camera and tripod up to the small platform at the top. One of Philippe’s friends was already up there so he did all of the hard work for us. After some safety instructions from Philippe it was my turn to put some hard work in and start climbing.
..nearly there…
A basic cable technique is used - both feet are in a strap and alternately raised high and stepped down on while pushing up a hand gripper up the rope to claim the height gained. This is then repeated over and over again. If the technique is done right you can shimmy up the rope quite quickly like the young Brazilian climber next to me. If your technique is not on the mark you end up putting in many more times the effort and you're quickly soaked in sweat - like I was.
…a°ù°ù¾±±¹±ð»å…
The tree was about 40 metres high and I was running out of puff so hung there and took a break about three quarters of the way up. Looking down at the guys below I seemed pretty damn high and glancing up above me I could see the ropes seemed to be secured to quite an old rickety branch. This gave me the incentive to climb more quickly! Finally, at the top, the warm evening light was perfect to shoot some nice static shots above the canopy. These would give us a nice contrast to the more dramatic moving aerials that will be shot from a plane.
…the view from above.
Soon we were losing the light so it was time to get down. This was by far the scariest thing to have happened to me on the whole expedition. I’m fine abseiling, as you are in control, but instead the Brazilian climber at the top simply lowered me down on a rope. Under the canopy it was now pitch dark and every now and then the rope I was attached to would drop about five feet. It was a case of just sitting there and waiting for the next drop.
I shone my torch down and I was still at a massive height with the rope swinging and disappearing below into the darkness. To make things worse the mozzies were now out and were drawn to my head torch so I turned it off and just hung in the darkness, spinning around while the slow lowing process took place. It was quite funny because the young climber lowering me was much smaller and lighter than myself and also has two fingers missing so I was mightily relieved and again covered in sweat when my feet finally hit the jungle floor.
Comments