North Carolina Tree Climbing Competition

So last weekend the prestigous tree climbing competition (7th annual, I believe) was held in Charlotte's own Freedom Park. Fortunately, almost no one in Charlotte knew about it, or perhaps they simply overlooked the opportunity before them. This is fortunate because it wasn't too crowded. Most of the crowd consisted of other tree climbers. And by tree climbers I mean of the world class variety, not your next door neighbor's kid who refers to himself as Monkey Man. In fact, the women's world champion tree climber was there. We were in the presence of greatness, in other words.
I spent the two days of the competition taking pictures and the majority of the second day unknowingly working on one of the worst sunburns of my life.
With ropes, climbing gear, helmets, and harnasses, each competitor used his or her preferred method of hoisting themselves into the designated tree. Once up, they would swing, scramble and leap their way from branch to branch in an effort to ring the strategically placed bells throughout the tree in the fastest time. This included cleaning their ropes and anchors from the tree after they got back down. Arguably the most exciting part of each round was the person wrestling their rope down from the branches before time ran out. There were competitors from Australia, New Zealand, and Minnessota. The most impressive participant in the competition was possibly the tree. I had reasonable skepticism that the combination of precariously placed bells on the far-reaching ends of branches with the weight of the climbers would end in some dismembered tree branches and climbers, but the tree hardly seemed to make a distinction between 180 pound man and 2 pound squirrel scrambling around it.