Great podcast and transcript with Mark Chisholm.

cory

Tree House enthusiast
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I happened across this piece on Tree Buzz and think some of you might appreciate it.

Imo, Mark is an awesome person who most anyone could learn alot from. :drink:

From a technical tree climbing standpoint Mark is one of the best in the world as indicated by the various state and world climbing 'ships he's won. And beyond climbing comps, he's in the field most every day getting it done in the 'real world.'

He has a deep love for doing tree work and, as mentioned in the podcast, also a great desire to build a sound, successful business which provides big value to both customers and employees.

He cofounded Tree Buzz which is where I first discovered online tree forums and met Butch and a lot of you all.

I went to a rigging work shop he presented years ago in PA, it was superb and I use concepts I learned there in basically every take down I do.

And I hired him years ago to climb and take down a really tricky storm damage scenario I had on a job that was too difficult for me and I learned a ton watching him do that job too. It was a Saturday cuz he was doing his own thing M-F, he arrived a bit late due to traffic coming from NJ, he took his time walking around and sizing up the tree situation and getting his gear set up (by which time I was getting twitchy due to seeming delays getting this big job started :|: :lol:) and then bing, bong, boom...cut, cut...zip, zip, before I knew it the tree was down and job was done early. He made it look totally eeeeeasy and safe as well. That is his thing- bang out mad production while keeping everything very safe.

He's also very down to earth, humble, and wise in the ways of interacting with people, alot of that is apparent in this podcast.

 
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Cory, that's a nice write-up you did about Mark.

He's a top guy in my book. Smart and humble.

It all figures if you know his parents. Up-standing folks. Mark started doing treework when he could walk.
 
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"Smart and Humble"- couldnt agree more. That is a good way to sum up Mark.

As we all know, humility can be sorely lacking in many tree guys ;)

I've never had the pleasure of meeting his family.

Gerry, I bet some folks here would enjoy it if you gave a quick recap of that crazy redwood climb/clean up that you, Mark, and a bunch of Buzzers did back in the day. I remember it from the early days of the Buzz and it definitely seemed like quite a radical project- everything from the concept of utilizing the fairly new concept of the internet to attract the attention and interest of a number of skilled climbers from across the country, to the tricky nature of the work involved in that giant redwood.
 
NickFrom WI worked for Mark at one time. He told me Mark’s workers called him El Gato, as Mark would set his line high in a tree with upward arching major limbs and walk up the underside of those limbs. Met him at a few conferences and he definitely is a calm, collected, straight-up good guy.
 
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