Has anyone had a support tree fall

**RootCause** · 03-16-2012, 11:26

Fronkey's also got a video where a tree fell on him during his Superior Hiking Trail trek. He wasn't hanging from it at the time, but it sure cut his trip short.

**Knotty** · 03-16-2012, 12:31

LNT is all good and fine but I'd have been much more concerned about personal injury or death. Bringing a poorly rooted or dead tree down on oneself is all to real a possibility, especially when winter camping. Always a good idea to pull and push aggressively on a tree before committing to hanging from it. You're fortunate it got caught up on other trees.

**WVScouter** · 03-16-2012, 14:19

If I don't lose some inches around the waist I could be the cause of trees bending ... I am severely testing the weight limit of my hammock !!

**BillyBob58** · 03-16-2012, 15:27

Originally Posted by emjackdad

Hopefully Shug will see this thread and link you over to his video. I saw one where he and his hiking buddy had stopped to set up camp, and the tree I think his buddy was going to hook up to just randomly fell over while Shug was doing the video. You can see it just topple over in the background. It pretty well freaked them out!

I was hanging my hammock years ago- on a wind free day- when a huge tree just fell over not far from me. I mean huge, it would have killed any one it fell on. Makes me quite nervous. I never hang anywhere where there are not tons of fallen trees or large branches all around me. A few weeks back I was hanging when I heard "whump" as a good sized branch fell about 10 or 20 yds from me. It would not have badly injured me unless it had hit my head/face/eyes, but it would have been unpleasant, or would have torn my tarp.

I don't think the LNT aspects would bother me that much, considering the sheer number of trees storms knock down all the time. Plus the fact that- if you managed to pull that tree over- considering what a tree weighs- it was going to be knocked over by a storm anyway, seems to me. But your close call with serious injury is another matter.

**gunner76** · 03-16-2012, 16:29

We had a hurricane come thru here last summer and it knocked down hundreds of trees. What surpised me was how shallow the root systems where for many of the trees that were blown over and I am talking about trees big enough that I could not wrap my arms around them.

**RichardD** · 03-16-2012, 22:02

I would say I was quite lucky just to have the tree tip, it did not wake me, I discovered that it had given way in the morning. It was almost the end of my thru so I was really quite skinny. My hiking partner was astounded that the tree had given way.
I had seen three large trees come down at various times during the hike, all of them in calm conditions, one near Damascus seemed to shed a branch or two every three or four minutes, it just fell apart over about half an hour, each part was a large crash. It was very strange.
I have always been carefull about hammocking or camping near big or dead trees, this time I was fast running out of daylight so probably was not as carefull as usual. A good look at the soil around the roots is now on my list of things to consider.
I always pick smaller trees and this has been to my advantage when a large nearby tree took a lightning strike back in Georgia.

**DavidWa** · 03-16-2012, 23:14

I remember this news story from Sept 2010. A college girl was killed and a young man was seriously injured when a tree fell on them while they were setting in a hammock.

http://www.fox59.com/news/wxin-colle...,7841506.story

According to the news report "the tree had rotted at the bottom. It collapsed, falling on the couple."

I seem to recall when I first read this story there was a picture and the two trees they had used were just a few feet from the water.

**DavidWa** · 03-16-2012, 23:23

After looking about a little more I found a follow up news story about the previous incident. The young man who was injured in the tree fall survived but he suffered a spinal cord injury and is paralyzed from the neck down.

http://chronicle.northcoastnow.com/2...mock-accident/

This story reports that the tree which fell was 20 -24 inches in diameter.

**gmcttr** · 03-17-2012, 07:15

Every mountain biker knows (or will know) that every once in a while a "mean" tree will jump out in front of you.

Maybe those mean trees have taken to laying down on hammockers as well.

I'll be looking for trees with a friendly disposition in the future.

**bindibadgi** · 03-17-2012, 15:35

lol, yeah I had one mean tree that quietly lay itself down on the road around a corner from me, and then conspired with a bug to fly in my eye as I rounded the corner. I opened my eye again just in time for a mammoth adrenaline rush which allowed me the only decent bunny hop of my life. I cleared the tree, even with fully loaded panniers. To this day I don't know how I managed that!