Expedition to Panama

When most North Americans think about the tropical rainforests of Central America, they usually envision creepy, disease-ridden swamps filled with man-eating crocodiles and jaguars.

But, as the 13 climbers who made up the 2004 treeclimbing expedition to Isla Colon in the Republic of Panama found out earlier this month, the lowland rainforests along the Golfo de los Mosquitos (Mosquito Gulf) can actually be very healthy places.

Where else can you get a theraputic mud bath every half hour followed by a cooling shower, then get aerobic exercise by constantly swatting at the little no-see-um bugs that seem to thoroughly enjoy your companionship? And you get to repeatedly exercise your visual senses while watching out for the occasional eyelash vipers, tarantulas, scorpions and poison-dart frogs.

Then there were the climbing trees. The "arbol grandes" of the rainforest were truly majestic, and the views from their canopies -- 150 to 175 feet were average heights for emergent trees -- took in many miles of seafront along the Panama-Costa Rica border and of the gigantic volcanos on the mainland that soared to more than 11,000 feet in altitude.

Everybody who took part in the Jan. 10-20 expedition got to add many new and exotic species of trees to their climbing logs, including some trees that even the area's most respected biologists could not identify. They also got to visit up close and personal with flocks of yellow-tailed toucans, green parrots with red bands around their eyes, and the big troups of howler monkeys that usually sounded like "The biggest dogfight you ever heard!"

The expedition, which had first been proposed last summer, got its official start on Saturday, Jan. 10, when most climbers met up at the Hotel Covadonga in downtown Panama City with Abe Winters of Treeclimbing USA and Bob Remenapp of Arborquest.

Several other climbers -- me, Tim Kovar from Treeclimbing Atlanta and Treeclimbers International, and Elliot Su from Treeclimbing Taiwan -- had gone on to the island several days earlier to meet up with Joe Maher of the TreeClimber's Coalition and to help scout out the best climbing trees in the area.

The list of climbers included Lynn Driver, Bob Wray, Mary Dekeon, Rod Justice, Dick Flowers, Patrick Dimmer and Iris Turney.

Most spent Saturday night in Panama City and took an early-morning commuter flight on the 32-seat Aeroperlas propeller airliner to the tiny but adequate Bocas del Toro "International" Airport on the southeast end of Isla Colon. (The international rating apparently comes from the days when Panama and Costa Rica were on speaking terms and allowed their national airlines to cross each others' borders.)

Joe met the group at the Bocas airport with a van and drove them the 18 kilometers northwest on a winding, narrow road to the tiny beachfront community of Boca del Drago, where the climbers were guests of the Institute for Tropical Ecology and Conservation (ITEC). Joe is on the ITEC faculty.

Dr. Pete Lahanas, professor of tropical ecology from New College in Florida who is the director of ITEC, welcomed the treeclimbers with an orientation lecture on the relatively spartan facilities. ITEC basically consists of a two-story classroom/laboratory building, a small five-room "Panamanian-style" hotel with one bathroom and cold-water shower for all the guests (don't put toilet paper in the toilet), and two two-story cabins that each will sleep about six people.

The institute normally offers three one-month-long academic sessions each summer and a three-week Christmas session. The students are mainly upperclassmen or graduate students from Canada and the United States, with a sprinkling of Europeans and Asians.

Most of the ITEC facilities are used the rest of the year by visiting researchers and Panamanian tourists.
Meals are provided by Restaurante Yarrisnori, a sand floor diner about 150 yards farther down the beach from ITEC.

The tiny complex, including ITEC and the hotel and restaurant, are linked to a 20-kilowatt electric generator that runs in the mornings and again in the late evenings. Most of the buildings face the Almirante Channel, a shallow reef-filled, sun-drenched body of salt water that links Bahia Almirante with the Caribbean Sea. The channel is internationally popular with marine biologists because of its diverse sealife.

Across the channel is the wild, wooly jungle of the 10,000-acre Soropta Penninsula which is owned by a local banana baron. That's where the poisonous snakes, the giant spiders, the lizards and the ugly Frigate birds ("Was that a flock of pterodactyls I saw flying down the beach this morning?") all seem to congregate in huge quantities.

After lunch the first day, Lahanas led the whole group -- most were wearing their oldest "jungle" clothes and knee-high rubber boots -- on a three-hour tour of nearby primary rainforests and swamp rainforests. It wasn't long before some very muddy expedition members decided they should have worn hip-waders like those used by fly fishermen.

"The first rule of the rainforest is very simple," Lahanas said. "Don't put your hand on anything without first looking to see what's on it. Even if you're falling!"

Lahanas said the heavy rainfall and the year-round growing season contribute to the huge diversity in the rainforest. "Here there are sometimes as many as 350 species of trees in one square hectare," he said. "By comparison, there are only 50-60 (native) species in all of the Southern Appalachians."

The Christmas session for ITEC had ended the day before the treeclimbing expedition arrived, but two students who wanted to learn advanced climbing techniques joined the team for several days, before their flights back to North America. One was Trina de Monye, a water-quality biologist from Victoria, British Columbia, and the other was Yekaterina "Kate" Krivogorskaya, an archaelology student originally from the Ural Mountains in Russia but now living in Brooklyn, N.Y.

The next morning the team headed for an area in the primary forest where there already were several lines into many of the biggest trees. Since most climbers were very experienced, everybody was allowed to choose the tree he or she wanted to climb. Most climbers picked the big hymenias, nutmegs and ceiba trees in the area.

Day three was similar to the previous day, with most climbers choosing between the drier primary forest and the wetter swamp forest. There was more "open" territory around many of the giant trees in the swamp, which provided great views of the countryside. By that time, everybody had determined which SRT and DRT climbing techniques worked best for them.

Day four was a free day for most expedition members, and most chose to either work on climbing techniques in smaller trees behind ITEC or to return to the primary forest for more climbs in the taller trees there. The joy of owning or driving a vehicle in rural Panama was also a big part of the day, when one of ITEC's two vans would not crank and the other had to be pushed out of the sand along the beach.

The real adventure started on day five, a Thursday, when half the group went to the Soropta Pennisula on the mainland for climbs in a gigantic ceiba nicknamed "The Tree of Pain," while the other half boated through a mangrove swamp to an isolated farm where they climbed an equally gigantic tree of unknown species.

The Tree of Pain earned its nickname from the short, hard spines that grew everywhere on tops of the limbs and main trunk well above 110 feet. Eventually, seven climbers managed to sit in the top of the tree at one time, where there was an excellent view of the surrounding jungle, the mainland mountains and the coast toward the Costa Rica border.

Those climbers on the pennisula trip also got a closeup look at a family of large tarantula spiders, one as big as a human hand, and the deadly eyelash viper. That snake, about 18 inches long, ranges from pale tan to bright yellow and can wait in the same position for days for his favorite food to approach.

Fortunately, according to Lahanas, the eyelash viper is a very docile snake that normally will bite only when seriously threatened. Nobody from ITEC had ever been bitten by the snake, or by the equally deadly fer-de-lance snake that also inhabits the area.

Meanwhile, the other half of the expedition group had gone to an isolated 120-acre farm owned by Enrique Dixon that included about a dozen gigantic trees. One tree had a hollow at its base that allowed climbers to walk all the way through the trunk.

Enroute to the farm, Dixon had taken the climbers by boat through a large mangrove swamp and up a narrow channel that led to his homestead. The only other route to his farm was a 2-kilometer footpath from one of the island's rare roads.

The tree they finally picked to climb had a monstrous crown that was hard to measure due to the large amount of jungle growth on the ground. Some of the limbs were four feet or more in diameter at their collars near the nain trunk. The lowest limb was about 90 feet above ground. The highest setting was about 147 feet, but there seemed to be several possible settings on three main leaders that would be well above 165 feet.

The next day, Friday, the two teams switched and the second team went to the farm while the first one went to the Soropta Penninsula.

After two strenuous days in deep rainforest, Saturday was a free day. Most expedition members headed back to the primary forest for climbs in big trees they had missed earlier, while others opted for a day on the beach in front of ITEC.

The next morning, our last full day at ITEC started with a beautiful sunrise and only a few high, puffy clouds in an otherwise blue sky. It was time to meet the "graduation tree" that Joe had been secretively saving for us.

Joe had said he was "saving the best for last," and he fulfilled that promise. The magnificent ceiba tree that soared above a farm pasture about three miles from ITEC was gigantic. Although the exact height of the tree will remain a mystery to be discovered by future visitors, it is safe to say that every member of the expedition stopped and stared in awe at it.

It had a dripline that was measured at between 147 and 151 feet.

Several climbers managed to set personal climbing records in the "pasture tree," as it was called, and Abe Winters won a bet by pitching his throwline (it took about 50 tries) over the lowest limb at about 110 feet. It was a personal record for Abe. Tim Kovar, who had also been part of the throwline bet, just looked at the tree and conceded defeat.

All 13 members of the expedition managed to get up into the canopy of the tree, where they discovered a main crotch at about 120 feet that was big enough for a small restaurant or motel and could easily hold eight to 10 people. Several climbers exceeded 160 feet, and noted that there was still plenty of climbable tree above them.

Monday morning, several expedition members got in last-second climbs in a medium-sized tree behind the ITEC compound while others packed or lounged on the beach. After a quick lunch, everybody's gear was loaded in the van for the drive to the airport, to catch the afternoon commuter flight back to Panama City.

Expedition members enjoyed their first hot showers in 10 days at the Hotel Covadonga, then set out on a walking tour of the older section of downtown Panama City. They ended up at the huge, impressive waterfront statute of Vasco de Balboa, who on Sept. 29, 1513 was the first European to cross the Isthmus of Panama and see the Pacific Ocean.

Everybody was up before 5:30 a.m. the next morning for the hour-long drive across Panama City to Tocumen International Airport, for their flights back to North America. The 2004 treeclimbing expedition to the rainforests of Panama was over.

That's a WOW story for sure! And the photos are where?

This sounds like a basis for a movie.:cool:

JimK (and others),
I personally am technologically challenged so I probably won't post any of my photos on this message board (don't know how to do it, and have tried and failed in the past). However, I suspect that several other expedition members will soon recover enough from the trip to get out their own photos and post a few for everybody to see.
And, for those of you who wonder if all this is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, I have an answer for you. Keep an eye on this message board and on the treeclimbingusa.com message board for info about next year's expedition to the same area. And who knows, maybe next year Peter "Treeman" Jenkins won't have a last-minute emergency that keeps him from joining the expedition. All of us missed Peter.

Thanks Wild Bill. My wife had shoulder surgery the week before the event. Believe me, I sure don't want to hurt my shoulders! Major nerve center with a slow recovery with even more pain. Maybe next year I'll get a shot at the Panama trees.

The weekend edition of USA Today has an article on the front page of the Life section about eco-tourism in Panama.
Try this link:
http://www.usatoday.com/usatonline/20040130/5884579s.htm

Regards,
-Knothead

Thanks for a great report! ITEC sounds like the perfect endeavor for a Novocollegian like Dr. Pete Lahanas!