Darwin says, "Accepted into the Archive."

I recently went on a 10-day hiking trip in the Adirondacks with several of my church friends. On the morning of Day 3, one of our guides noticed a 50-foot tall dead birch tree leaning towards one of the tents. This was dangerous! Later that day, we decided to pull it down.

(As a side note, everyone involved in the story is of high school age, except for the guides, who are in college.)

Our other guide enlisted the help of two other guys to help take down the tree. First, they tried pushing it down. That had no effect whatsoever. Then, they whacked it with a trekking pole a few times, but that did no damage either (other than heavily scraping the bark). Finally, they decided to pull it down.

The guide retrieved the haul line from the bear bag (used to lift food in the air so bears can't get at it) and succeeded in throwing it over a short thick branch about halfway up the tree. Their plan was to pull it towards a sturdy live tree on the other side of the tent, thus avoiding any damage to the campsite. However, the guide realized he would need one more person pulling on the rope in order to balance the force on each side of the rope.

Enter our hero, D-Palms. (His nickname has been used with permission in order to protect the not-so-innocent.)

When he arrived, everyone decided that they would pull towards the aforementioned live tree, and when they heard the dead tree crack, they would run as fast as they could away from the falling tree. But somehow D-Palms missed this memo.

He and the guide grabbed hold of one end of the rope, and the other two guys took the other end. On a count of three, they all pulled with all their might. As they strained, the tree began to shift. It didn't take long before a loud CRACK was heard, and sure enough, everyone dropped the rope and took off.

Almost everyone, that is.

Instead of running, D-Palms stood directly behind the target tree, covered his ears, closed his eyes, and crouched slightly.

The dead tree fell exactly as planned. It HIT THE TARGET TREE, bounced off, and landed with a loud crash just to the left of the target tree. It missed D-Palms by less than a foot.

Of course, the guides were a little bit mad at him, but overall everyone was laughing too hard to be angry. Especially me, who had been watching the whole action from my vantage point by another tent (after being told, just before they pulled it down, to get away from the tree).

That was one of the many highlights of the trip, but it was definitely the funniest. One final note: After the whole thing was over, I went up to D-Palms and said, "When I get home, I'm telling the Darwin Awards about this!" And now that I am home, I have.

Submitted on 07/19/2009

Submitted by: Matt Monitto
Reference: Personal Account, July 11, 2009

Copyright © 2009 DarwinAwards.com

Candi said:
Definitely Keep: Personal Account
LOL!! This is a riot! And I like this writeup. Thanks, Matt!

Bruce said:
Definitely Keep: Personal Account
Sounds like D-Palms is VERRRY lucky. Thanks, Matt!

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