Tree Climbing

I love climbing trees, although I do not possess equiptment. Fun tree climbing stories-I always use trees to win games. Once in my neighborhood when I was about twelve we were playing cops and robbers, so I decided to find a good hiding spot. I climbed a small pine tree(40') up till where it was bending a good deal and I figured I might snap it if I went further. That got my hands sticky, so I said screw this and got down to find a better tree. I ended up on the other side of the yard, climbing another pine about the same size and bending it to swing over to the lowest branch of an oak tree, about 20' up. When they finally found me, it took them a while to figure out how I had gotten up. This made me quite proud.
Another time, I went to an audubon camp on an island in ME, basically nature camp. We went into the woods at night and played hide and go seek-ish game. We were on a path, and the rules were that we could only hide 10 feet off the path on either side, so I just climbed a tree right over the path. I won the game, as once everyone was found they realized I wasn't there and had to start looking for me. I ended up jumping in front of someone and scaring the crap out of them. Good times.
Although I like going up in trees, heights in general scare me. I was at a small ski area a few weeks ago where my friend was working as a life guard at a pond at the base of the hill. When he got off we hiked up the hill(it is really a hill, like it shouldn't even be a ski area it's so small) and got to the top. We hung out for a while, and I was looking around when I noticed those pads they usually put on the chairlift poles weren't there and the ladders were easily accessable. Climbing the 30' up one of those was far more scary than climbing a tree of the same height, but I have no idea why.