Pulling big ones

Burnham

Woods walker
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Mar 7, 2005
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Western Oregon
I barely avoided a derail in Chris' thread on high lead blocks...:lol:

Old Time High Lead Logging Blocks - https://www.masterblasterhome.com/showthread.php?15445-Old-Time-High-Lead-Logging-Blocks

So here's the thread for stories about rigging to pull over old growth conifers. Long-time readers of the Treehouse will probably recall references I've made in the past to these projects...apologies to those for repeats of past glories. Old people tend to do that...I hear :).

Back in the mid to late 1980's, USFS fisheries biologists spent lots of time and money trying to improve in-stream habitat, mostly for T&E anadromous species (salmon and steelhead). Structure, in the form of log jams, had been actively removed over many decades prior to that, at the behest of fisheries biologists I hasten to add, to improve in-stream habitat :?. Confused yet? Not as confused as the -ologists apparently were :|:.

Anyway...logs were carefully placed, and cabled together, with cable anchors epoxied into boreholes in bedrock or huge boulders. Don't get me started on how those -ologists could justify putting a large excavator right in a stream channel in pursuit of their objectives, while at the same time screaming bloody murder about a drop of sediment from a road maintenance program for ditch and culvert cleaning :what:.

Somewhere along the way one of them got to musing that it sure would look more natural, and probably function better if we could just imitate the way trees end up in streams in the real world...blowdowns. An old trails foreman who'd been called on to help with the rigging of the log jams had experience building backcountry log foot bridges using small gas-powered winches, and a bunch of MA. He speculated that with the right rigging, tipping over trees along streams might be doable. The rootwad would anchor the tree, which would catch other wood from the flow.

I was called in to do the rigging aloft. We started with smaller trees, about 24 inch dbh. The standard rigging we worked out was to hang a 6 inch block on a 5/8 inch cable choker, run 1/2 inch cable from a ground level anchor point across the stream from the tree, up through the block, back across the stream, through another 6 inch block anchored low, and then run down or up stream to the pulling machine (either an excavator or a spider. I always liked using the spider better, 'cause it was winch equipped).

I had serious doubts about being successful...I'd been climbing trees a long time, and I considered them pretty sturdy :). That first tree was about 24 inches, and maybe 150 feet tall...I set the block at 70 feet. I learned at that point that manhandling 140 feet of 1/2 inch cable up and into a block is hard work :). I was completely surprised when that first one laid over easy as you please...a little taken aback, to be honest.

There was a lot of trial and error early on, figuring how to work with the cable attachments, join sections of cable to avoid binding on blocks as slack came out of the systems yet still have enough room to work the tree over. As we moved into trying this with bigger trees, I made the mistake of thinking I should rig higher up, to give us more leverage on the roots. That turned out to be an error with dangerous consequences. We broke the tops out of a couple before I realized we needed to stay down low enough for the stem to not be able to bend much.

Breaking the top out was very scary...heaps of cable and blocks snapping and snarling through the air, shards of timber flying all willy-nilly, and the big top crashing down through other tops...just mayhem!

The other disconcerting thing was how little directional control we had once the roots finally gave up the battle. As you can imagine, asymetrical pull from those roots being ripped free from the ground did not auger well for hitting a desired lay with much accuracy. An arc of about 30 degrees +/- from the actual pull direction was average, but a few fell outside of that...but we always got them in the water enough to satisfy the fish guys.

It was a wonderfully challenging project to be a part of. One of those times in my career when my work stood pretty high profile.

I never took a single pic...that was before digital cameras were common, and though I've tried to get some I know were taken by observers, so far I've always struck out :(.
 
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Both. Some we needed a dry suit, mask, and snorkle to get to, in the water, under a big trunk.
 
That would be a tad spooky having just dropped the tree you are under.......
I love the stories you and Gerry tell about stuff like this. Just adds a new dimension of looking at what we do and what developed over the years.
 
What a cool experience! I've been shocked before about the root hold of trees in a woodland.environment vs the root hold of trees in a residential setting.
 
When I visited Burnham there was a giant stack of logs outside his equipment trailer.
Most of those would have given a Danish lumber mill owner a serious hard-on.
So I asked Burnham if that was the sw log pile.

" No, that is just some stuff we are going to toss in the rivers for fish habitats" he said.

They sure treat their fish nicely up around Mt. Hood:D
 
Wow Burnham, that's a great story! It must have been pretty exciting working on a project like that.

Any idea how these trees in the stream look now after all these years?
 
Interesting history to read about. It sounds a bit like somewhat controlled abandon for the fish. Not many would get the opportunity.
 
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Chris, they do a pretty thorough job of monitoring the condition of these man-made log jams. Last time I looked into it, and best I recall, after 5 years about 80% were in place, though many shifted closer to parallel to the flow than when originally dropped (they do photo point samples). After 10 years, the numbers where still quite good from my perspective, at better than 60% in place. Looking at them today, you'd never guess that they were created artificially.

That's a much better average over time than the earlier cable and epoxy placements have done, in my opinion because the wood we pulled over was so much larger/longer and the heaviest part was up out of the water and still attached to the ground with some of the roots.
 
So was the intent to make weir like structures to raise or speed the water flow or rather build little deep pools of water ? It would take a hydraulics engineer to get the gist of it .
 
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In-stream structure serves multiple advantages to the fishies, Al.

In high water events, it provides safe havens to all sizes of fish. In normal conditions, it provides hidey holes for fingerlings and smolts, to help avoid predation. It helps keep water temps down in low water season by shadeing. It provides habitat for all the invertebrates that the fishies, large and small, feed on.

As far as fish are concerned, it's good stuff.
 
Well now that kind of makes sense .

In a former life my property had a stone bottomed creek traversing the property which ran through a thicket .In the heat of summer the little fish would seek the cooler waters that lie under tree roots etc .The action of the waters eroded deeper holes going around the roots of big cotton woods lining the creek banks .
 
So you pulled the big, tall, shady tree down so you could shade the creek with the log? I think I get it:P
 
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Fair point, Willie. I know you are just getting in a ribbing, but to reply...these were old growth stands, and the stream banks were lined with timber and hardwoods. We'd usually choose a big tree back a bit from the channel bank, and only one or two every 1/4 mile or so of watercourse, so while your observation is correct, in the bigger picture it wasn't much of an impact to overall shading from the crowns.
 
Got me curious now, Burnham....how much tonnage of pull do you figure it took to pull those large trees over?
 
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Well...that's a good question. When we used the spider, it was running a 15k lb. hydraulic winch, which is near enough to pick that machine up, I believe...those are not all that heavy. The operator would actually brace the spider by positioning the legs and excavator arm/bucket to counter the pull.

Then I was setting rigging for a theoretical 2:1 MA. But we never actually were at 2:1 due to spread in the anchor points and friction through the blocks.

On big ones, and we did some over 48" dbh and +225 feet tall, the procedure often was to tension everything up as much as we could, getting the tree pulling the roots HARD, popping a few...and then let it sit for a minute. Then release some tension, and do that again. It could take 4 or 5 cycles on a stubborn one.

Some gave up with little fuss, on the first pull. Others fought hard. I was the guy directing the pulls, and after doing it a while, I got to being able to read them fairly well. In some cases, I'm pretty sure we were within striking distance of breaking rigging, but we never did. You can bet I always had personnel well into safety zones, expecting a whiplashing cable.

But none of that answers the question directly. I still don't know, but somewhere south of 30,000 lbs, and perhaps north of 20,000 might be a decent guess.
 
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