Burnham
Woods walker
I barely avoided a derail in Chris' thread on high lead blocks...
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
.
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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