The trees of West Park on the North Side put in a cool, drizzly day serving up challenges to 26 professional climbers in need of a rigorous test of their own mettle.

Steve Mellon, Post-Gazette Michael Kolcun, 20, of Cochranton, Crawford County, takes part in the aerial rescue event yesterday at the 2004 Western Tree Climbing Championship. Click photo for larger image.

Yesterday's 2004 Western Tree Climbing Championship, organized by the Pennsylvania-Delaware Chapter of the International Society of Arboriculture, was a pre-qualifier for the state championship later this month in State College, Centre County.

In August, the international society's 80th annual conference and trade show will be held with seminars inside the David L. Lawrence Convention Center and the real fun -- the climbing contests -- planned for West Park.

These competitions, which trace their roots to one in St. Louis back in 1976, have been gaining attention from tree-care professionals such as utility workers and residential tree trimmers. This year the local chapter had to turn away 20 to 25 people.

Those who got in willingly took on whatever the trees could offer.

A healthy ginkgo stood firm while a 200-pound dummy hung from its branches, allowing climbers to compete on techniques to rescue an immobile colleague. A London plane tree's smooth bark became slick in the steady sprinkle, making things more interesting for the apprentices.

A less stately -- read shorter -- red maple gave both Angelina Winbush, of Bloomfield, and state Rep. Jake Wheatley Jr., D-Hill District, a chance to experience tree climbing with saddle and rope.

Winbush, a 9-year-old future pianist, does a lot of kid-style tree climbing at home and had no problem quickly reaching the upper branches. Wheatley, a former Marine, found the whole rope thing tricky. After a lot of straining and pulling in ways that onlookers predicted would leave him sore later, he finally made it.

"You left a lot of stuff out," he told his grinning coach, Dave McQuaid, vice president of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 1919, which represents line clearance tree trimmers for companies such as Duquesne Light and Allegheny Power.

Jennifer McMasters, of Cochranton, was experiencing her own sort of nerve-twisting tree first. She came to watch her boyfriend, Jared Irwin, compete. Irwin has been in the business almost two years and was headed up in a bucket raised by a lift truck to start his race about 60 feet above ground.

He had five minutes to ring four different bells set around the massive sycamore. Irwin moved quickly, stretching his pole pruner to ring the highest chime, swinging down and over to a white bucket set toward the middle of a lengthy branch.

"Headache," he yelled before dropping two sticks toward an orange target in the grass below. That's an updated version of "look out below."

The judges and Irwin's friends couldn't contain themselves as he ticked off the bells with time left. A limb-walking station raised the tension as Irwin moved out on the ever smaller branch toward a distant mark. "Come on, Jared, get the bell," yelled someone. He did, then rushed back to the trunk for his final slide home, two seconds over the five-minute limit. An exhausted Irwin couldn't believe it. "Two friggin' seconds," he said. "Two friggin' seconds."

If he can pay the $50 entrance fee and get his insurance waiver, he can come back.

Mark Moeske, who owns a company near Albany, N.Y., keeps returning. He ranked 29th in the international competition in 1999 and 25th in 2002.

"It's fun to see how you can do compared to how other people who do this," said Moeske.

Yesterday's competition helped him get in form but it won't get him back into the international event. For that, he'll have to win the state contest in New York.