Many kids clamber over trees and branches during their childhood years, but Greg Hart never stopped climbing.
This 41-year-old knows trees—he's spent the past 25 years climbing them, performing and competing as part of the growing spectator sport of logging skills competitions. On July 15, 2001 the veteran tree-climber capped his career traveling to New York and capturing the gold medal in the tree-topping event at the Lake Placid ESPN Great Outdoor Games.
Although he's now the top in his class and a regular performer at the Maple Ridge Fair and at the PNE, Greg was once a student at Haney Central and Yennadon Elementary. He started tree topping at the age of 16 while attending Garibaldi Secondary, and knew what he wanted to do the first time he stared up at men clambering up a 40-foot high tree in seconds.
"Even as a kid I used to love climbing trees, then in Mission I saw the sport ... right from the time I first saw it I wanted to be a tree climber," he says, adding he wanted to do something a "little more crazy and dangerous that the run of the mill stuff."
It was the competition, along with the everpresent thrill and danger of the speed climbing that intrigued young Greg, who says his event is "by far the most spectacular, everybody wants to see the speed climbing."
But when he first set out to become the best tree climber in the world, Greg couldn't enrol in a course or take an after-school class. The only way for him to learn was by the other champions' examples, and by his own mistakes along with a lot of practice.
As he practiced the speed climbing, Greg stayed in shape with school sports. He played eighth-man on the rugby pitch for Garibaldi’s RebeIs, and even went to the provincials in track and field with long-distance sprinting. It was the competitive spirit that drove him.
"It doesn't ever seem to go away."
And now that he's the best, Greg is teaching others how to become a world-class climber, passing on the wisdom he learned from so many other champions when he was young.