climbing

Nuts about climbing

The spirit of Heath Robinson lives on and is to be found, currently, enjoying itself in the Cannanore district of southern Kerala, a pro vince of India famed for its production of in volved and argumenta tive debaters. Robin son’s ghost seems to have come to reside in a Mr K. Joseph who has just won a $1250 Indian National Invention Award for a device to aid the climbing of coco nut trees.

Mr Robinson says that with his machine a man can climb the tal lest coconut tree in about two minutes. “It makes climbing such a tree no different from climbing a ladder,” he said proudly at the prize-giving.

The climbing kit con sists of two iron frames to be fastened to oppo site sides of the tree trunk by a belt of wire

rope. Each main frame has a sliding sub-frame with a foot rest at the bottom and a handle linked to a locking de vice.

To climb a person keeps his weight on one foot-rest while raising the other, using the handle. He then shifts his weight across to the raised foot-rest and raises the other. At the top the frame is locked in place while the clim ber works among the nuts.

The frames, priced at $29 each, are selling widely in Kerala, Tamil Naidu, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh. So far, however, no real market is seen for them in the Pacific where tree-clim bing is an art form, and two minutes is regarded as rather a long time to get to the top of a Pacific Tall coconut, stunted examples of which could rise above most of the taller Indian trees.

The more traditional coconut climber of the Pacific, not yet bothered by the “tree bicycles” of India.