Bored with your workouts? Try tree rope climbing

I can’t breathe. I’m exhausted. My heart is beating through my chest. I can’t believe this is happening. I’m sorta freaked out. I’m dangling in mid-air, 50 feet above the ground, swaying in the breeze, hanging from a half-inch-wide rope like a slab of beef in a butcher shop.

I’m tree rope climbing. It’s a new outdoor activity to do when you find yourself in the company of a 110-foot pine tree in the forest on 8,343-foot Onyx Summit, high above Big Bear.

And it’s fun. Really.

Granted, it’s a different type of fun than its popular cousin, zip-lining, which not surprisingly is also offered by Action Tours of Big Bear. Found in every primeval forest nowadays from Costa Rica to Hawaii, zip-lining Disneyland-izes the great outdoors, clipping you onto a line like a sack of potatoes and mindlessly sending you screaming over the jungle canopy like Tarzan on a rail. But whereas it is horizontal and adrenaline-rush fast, tree rope climbing is vertical and glacially slow — a laborious Jack and the Beanstalk ascent that definitely requires some actual work.

I knew that. So did my friend Rich White, a 56-year-old botanist and personal trainer from Big Bear. As mountain bikers hitting the local trails, we were looking forward to a challenge that would teach us something new — without taxing us too much for the big ride we had planned for the afternoon.

We just didn’t count on tree climbing being so technical — and Cym van Rossum making it look so easy.

She was the happy, outgoing 46-year-old mom from Huntington Beach who was part of our instructional group, along with her family. After we put on our harnesses and were coached by our climbing guides, she was the first one to get on the ropes. Calmly and assuredly, she shimmied up the rope deep into the tree branches, at least 60 or 70 feet up, posed for photos and rappelled down. Elapsed time: 10 minutes.

Rich and I looked at each other. “We’re going up four or five times,” we thought, with a slight hint of smirk: If she could do it that fast, this would be a walk in the park for us.

The procedure for ascending the rope is simple but technical and can be confusing for first-timers. The key is a movable knot that you push up the rope bit by bit. The knot tightens and locks in place when you put weight on the foot stirrups and releases when you take the weight off by tucking up your legs and feet.

In an inchworm-like motion, you unweight the stirrups, push the knot up six inches, then stand up. It’s all legs and coordination. At least it should be.

But no one who followed Van Rossum managed to climb at her pace. Not her airline pilot husband, Rick, 50, or daughter Taylor and friend Sidney Steiner, both 15-year-old soccer players at Huntington Beach High.

Then it was my turn.

It took me almost five minutes just to rise a foot off the ground. I could not figure out how to unweight the damn knot! It should be your best friend but soon became my bitter, relentless enemy. It would obey sometimes, but more often not. As I tried to muscle it, I got winded. Add to that the elevation, and I was constantly pausing to pant.

Refusing to end it on a sour note, I kept at it until I got some semblance of a rhythm. I went as far as I could through the branches and rappelled down. I was completely drenched and drained after a grand total of 45 minutes on the rope. I was still breathing heavily 10 minutes later.

Back at Action Tours’ offices, we deconstructed the climb.

“I was exhausted,” said Rick. “It took everything I had.”

“I definitely would have gone again,” chirped the ever-perky Supermom.

The teenage girls agreed they liked tree climbing better than zip-lining. “It’s more rewarding because you work for it,” they said.

My buddy Rich and I heartily concurred. We had Nepalese food for lunch and a rest, then decided to cut our planned bike ride short.

We’d already gotten our workout for the day.

health@latimes.com