tree climb

Still, they are closing in, just like a pack of wild dogs, and so I do what I have done my whole life in such circumstances. I pick a high tree and begin to climb. If running hurt, climbing is agonizing because it requires not only exertion but direct contact of my hands on the tree bark. I’m fast, though, and by the time they’ve reached the base of my trunk, I’m twenty feet up. For a moment, we stop and survey one another. I hope they can’t hear the pounding of my heart.

...

I give Cato time to hoist himself into the tree before I begin to climb again. Gale always says I remind him of a squirrel the way I can scurry up even the slenderest limbs. Part of it’s my weight, but part of it’s practice. You have to know where to place your hands and feet. I’m another thirty feet in the air when I hear the crack and look down to see Cato flailing as he and a branch go down. He hits the ground hard and I’m hoping he possibly broke his neck when he gets back to his feet, swearing like a fiend.

The girl with the arrows, Glimmer I hear someone call her — ugh, the names the people in District 1 give their children are so ridiculous — anyway Glimmer scales the tree until the branches begin to crack under her feet and then has the good sense to stop. I’m at least eighty feet high now. She tries to shoot me and it’s immediately evident that she’s incompetent with a bow.

- The Hunger Games, Chapter 13