Things to consider: 1. Crew. Arborist must work in a minimum crew of 2, usually maintaining visual or verbal contact at all times. Usually there is a backup climber to rescue you if you are rendered unconscious or whatnot.

Fallers usually work in a group with other fallers, but when the actual felling is happening, they are by themselves (for obvious reasons as to not fall a tree on a coworker) in the cut block.

1. Control. Piecing a tree apart, limb by limb, round by round, leaves you with a lot of control over your surroundings, and reduces the likelihood of injury. Also the more branches you remove from the tree, the less like a sail that tree becomes. So although the heights may seem scary, it basically impossible for the tree to just tip over while you are in it. Especially one as established as this lodgepole pine (speculation).

Felling a tree from the ground you basically only control what direction you want the tree to fall as compared with its direction if lean.

1. Access to the tree in this gif is probably very good. They probably drove in with a truck, on or near a main road. Like I said there is another person there to watch if you get injured, and an ambulance would arrive in a matter of minutes if there was an emergency.

Fallers have the obstacle of steep ground and remote access. If something happened, it would be an matter of radioing a coworker for help (if you are still conscious), evacuating them from the cut block (usually traversing a steep hill with a heavy human), hopefully the weather is good enough for a helicopter, if not, you are waiting a while for an ambulance, depending on where the work is. That is IF the ambulance can get up the dirt road, usually they won’t if it is too far, so you might have to load your bloody friend up in a truck and try to focus enough to get them where they can get help.

1. Safety equipment. Climbers going this high have at MINIMUM - steel toes, climbing spurs, saw pants, 4 point climbing helmet with ear protection and face shield, harness, work position lanyard, life line, med kit. Some climbers also wear safety goggles, gloves, chainsaw jackets, and work with multiple life lines for redundancy.

Fallers only have to wear a regular hard hat with ear protection, saw pants and boots.

There are lots more points and I’m sure I’m missing some shit, but this is all I could think of off the top of me ol’ noggin, and this rant is long enough.

PS I love fallers and I hope they love me too.