Community Highlights: Meet Mitchell Magdovitz of Tree Climbing Colorado

Today we’d like to introduce you to Mitchell Magdovitz.

Hi Mitchell, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
Like many people, I loved climbing trees as a kid. I grew up in Memphis and had a big magnolia in the front yard and a bunch of long leaf pines in the back that I climbed a lot. When I moved out to Colorado in 1999, I would occasionally find a Ponderosa while on a hike or trail run that seemed to speak to me, “Don’t you want to climb me?!”

When I moved to the Bay Area in 2007-08 to do some business development with a transportation technology startup that I co-founded, I spent a lot of time in the coastal redwood forests and fell in love. I would literally have dreams of squirrel suiting through the canopy: what a glorious death that would be!

Fast forward to the Covid epidemic, and I got clear that I really wanted to pursue recreational tree climbing as a profession. I found Tree Climbers International, founded by the “godfather” of rec tree climbing, Peter Jenkins, and since they weren’t offering in person courses at the time, I took an online course. Then, I was pouring out my heart with my men’s group, I learned that one of the men was an instructor! How serendipitous! No one, even in Boulder, CO, has heard of recreational, technical tree climbing, and I happened to be in a men’s group for years with a guy who grew up with his mother, Genevieve Summers, running a school, Dancing with Trees, in his backyard growing up: she was one of the first generation of instructors. He introduced to a fellow, Harv “Ponderosa” Teitelbaum, who started Tree Climbing Colorado in 2002. I started training with Harv shortly thereafter, and then took over the school three seasons ago.

Since then, we have expanded to offering programs around the Front Range, from Longmont to Littleton, and many places in between. We take people up from 7-107 (the oldest was in their 80s actually), including people who have spinal cord injuries, cognitive challenges and other barriers that might normally keep them away from such an experience. We work with camps, scout troops, child and adult birthday parties and also do team bonding and building programs. Our standard program is a 2-hour Intro to Tree Climbing experience, but we also offer multi-day instructional programs for people who want to learn how to climb on their own.

We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
My enthusiasm and joy have been steady from the start. Making people aware of tree climbing as an outdoor recreational activity has been a challenge. Even in Colorado and in Boulder, outdoor recreational centers of the country, fewer than 1 in 100 people knows that recreational tree climbing is something that people of all ages do outdoors for fun.

Ironically, even though the City touts its environmental ethic and outdoor focus, Boulder Forestry won’t let us climb a single tree in any park in the City! Yes, I am throwing shade. (When you climb trees for a living, you hang out with a lot of shady characters.) Fortunately, we have been able to work with Denver, Superior, Longmont, Littleton and Parker as well as private property owners around the area to be able to enjoy some great specimens, from Plains Cottonwoods to Green Ash, Douglas Firs and Ponderosa Pines to Sycamores and Elms.

My love of sharing the experience with people has only been exceeded by the joy that nearly all climbers get from the experience.

It’s a great way to spend the day.

Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your business?
We work with a really broad range of people and organizations and succeed in providing life-changing experiences. I make that statement sincerely: once people get to experience playing around the arms of large, beautiful trees, they typically walk around every day looking at trees (in the urban forest) differently. They look up more. They see more beauty and opportunity for adventure.

We run adaptive programs and offer setups for people who couldn’t climb without extra assistance. We work well with neurodivergent children.

We run private programs for camps, scout groups and birthday parties.

We also run team bonding and more extensive team building programs for companies.

We also work with addiction recovery and rehabilitation programs.

And we also train ground crews for arborists who want their works to get really solid training in the fundamentals of technical tree climbing prior to conducting riskier aerial aspects of professional tree care.

I don’t know whether the alchemical process of climbing trees to feel more grounded relates to our ancestral heritage, gathering away from predators in the treetops, or perhaps just being held by a much larger (and often much older) living organism, but sharing the experience of tree time is a real gift, regardless of the initial intention of a program.

Any advice for finding a mentor or networking in general?
My mentors in this space came from following my passion, really my calling, to more deeply align what I am doing in this world with something that is good for my body, mental/emotional health and the community. While not everyone can take the risk of jumping in with both feet to pursue their calling, almost everyone can make time to prioritize what speaks to them in their heart and tempts them like a siren call toward their potential destruction. That’s hilarious to write, but it’s true. Birthing something new has risks. Mentors can be a huge help. So…follow your calling sincerely, and you will find people who want to help you succeed.

Pricing:

• Highly variable
• $60 for a 2-hour Intro to Tree Climbing expereience
• Custom Pricing for Team Bonding / Building
• $750 for a 2-day intensive Basic Tree Climbing Course to learn the fundamentals to climb on your own

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.treeclimbingcolorado.com
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TreeClimbingColorado

Image Credits
Kirsten Lewis