New Career

[Jacob J.]

Your never to old sawsalottawood remember that. I am still young and strong as an ox. Send me your resume and maybe I will let you on the crew. Lol!!

I was cutting timber for a large outfit here and they had a guy around 38-39 who tried to break in on a high-lead operation pulling and setting chokers. When a person watches it on tv, like anything else, they don't get a real idea of what it's like out there. Gologit mentioned bad weather, snakes, dust, and long commutes- but there's also running up and down a 110% slope all day long with a semi-sociopathic hook tender calling you every name in the book, or a siderod that sends you to the bottom of the unit to grab a block that no one needs just so he can eat your lunch while you're out of sight. Then there's jaggers on the lines tearing your hands up and flying choker bells trying to knock your hard hat off.

That 38-39 year-old rookie toughed it out for about three weeks and finally said he just couldn't do it. Oh, and he'd just retired from the Marines.

 

[slowp]

Picture 1 The Hooktender. He's packing a heavy load of steel line up the hill. You can't see the horizontal sleet very well, but it was a fine and miserable day.

View attachment 266209
This is self explanatory. If I could have gone somewhere else that day, I would have and it was the crummy, not my pickup. It was an extremely unpleasant place to be when the boss saw this. The loader was broken down so they had to walk the yarder down to pull out the crummy.
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Winter pics.

This is flat, easy ground. Because it is flat, they had to rig up an intermediate support, or jack, and they hadn't done that in many years. The first try, well they had it backwards.

See the footprints? That's where the hooktender had to go, packing haywire. I had to follow. Just
a skip through the woods.

More to come.

 

[redprospector]

I think my next thread will be about the History of the Lumberjack since some of you guys don't understand what a lumberjack really is.

Here's a little video of me & the wife (she's a Lumberjill). Are you sure you understand what a "Lumberjack" really is?



Andy

 

[Gologit]

Yes, we hooked them. These days most climbers shoot ropes into the trees and do tension climbs up ropes. We flipped em. Sooo much work. What you do is flip one side of your flip line up and step up and around. You only throw up the one side and always step up and around so you spiral up the tree. And when you come to a branch you use a second flip line and install it by hanging it over the branch then circling the tree to reach the snap and tie in. Then release the lower flip and continue up and around.

If this sounds like a lot of work, it was. The climbs were absolutely brutal. Plus, if you didn't drag your saw up you had to pull it up later, as some did. I preferred to take my saw with me and I usually carried a couple wedges and a hammer. I remember one I did, at about 20 feet up I was already wore out. I did most of these trees for a power company. We were busting out big dead tops back away from the transmission line right of way. Anything that could break out and hit the line had to come down. Another job was to bust out big tops so that the forest service could use helicopters and install eagles nesting platforms. Had to have 5 feet of wood across the top for them and in those trees the 5 foot target was a long way up. And no they were not Redwoods, they were Doug Firs and some huge Ponderosas. Them damn Ponderosas were the worst because the bark furrows were deep and the bark was hard as rock. Very hard climbing. We used 3 or 4 inch gaffs. Those were the days but I'm glad they are over for me.

I guess I should have paid more attention to my surroundings. I topped a few trees in this country many years ago but I can't remember any that were five feet across where I cut them. I've seen quite a few that were 5' dbh but even those are becoming rare. What was the dbh on the ones you topped at 5'? Must have been huge.

I worked mostly private ground but once in awhile we'd do a little for the FS. I was just topping and hanging blocks, nothing fancy. I was lazy, though. I'd limb on the way up with the smallest saw I could find and if I needed anything bigger to top the tree I'd hang a small block with a pass line and have the saw sent up. Much easier on the body.



How long ago did you work in this area? Remember anybody from here?

 

[redprospector]

In some of the big conifers 200 feet is nothing. I did one big Doug Fir and it was 125 feet to the first branch and it was as big as a car. The big tree veterans here know how big things can get. My saw of choice was an 084 and I dragged it up trees that took me at least 6 hours to climb. If you doubt it then there is an area of expertise in this business that you have not been exposed to. And that's O.K. because there isn't a whole lot of work up in the really big stuff. Only so many guys ever get to do it. At one point in my career I specialized and trained climbers to do the big stuff for a company based in Grass Valley, California. The majority of climbers who tried the really big stuff quit. A few had what it took, most didn't. Most people here probably never climbed a tree 15 foot thick and 300 feet tall, but some of us have.

Wow! That's amazing. When the mill I cut timber for shut down I had to resort to climbing (yard trees). Highest I ever got was about 130'. Only way I know that is my 100' rope wouldn't reach the ground, got out a 150 footer and my son said there was about 20' on the ground. I only climbed for about 7 or 8 years because the knee I had shattered wouldn't hold up to it.
Wow! 15' DBH and 300' tall. Amazing, those trees just don't grow everywhere.

Andy

 

[slowp]

This is ground that the buncher could not work on. It's a bit steep but is nothing abnormal.

See the guy in the white hat? He's a good guy to work with--until he tells the story of how he lost some of his fingers in a logging accident. Then you want to ask him to please don't say anymore.
He had to wait, with his fingers stuck in a block, because they had to walk the loader up from another landing in order to rescue him. I think he had to wait 45 minutes with his fingers stuck in the block. He took his eyes off for just a few seconds, to yell at the crew because they were doing something unsafe.

And lastly, the glorious job of moving the yarder on a paved road. (the picture thing is doing funny things). I helped move tires on one move. It was a good workout. Two guys were trying to do it alone, because the crew had not shown up that day for work. So, they set the speed on the yarder, aimed it down the road and while it was moving itself, they were moving tires. Not the best way.






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[FanOFatherNash]

Lumberjack use axes and cross cut saws , no power saw

 

[expertech]

I guess I should have paid more attention to my surroundings. I topped a few trees in this country many years ago but I can't remember any that were five feet across where I cut them. I've seen quite a few that were 5' dbh but even those are becoming rare. What was the dbh on the ones you topped at 5'? Must have been huge.

I worked mostly private ground but once in awhile we'd do a little for the FS. I was just topping and hanging blocks, nothing fancy. I was lazy, though. I'd limb on the way up with the smallest saw I could find and if I needed anything bigger to top the tree I'd hang a small block with a pass line and have the saw sent up. Much easier on the body.



How long ago did you work in this area? Remember anybody from here?

We never measured trees. Didn't matter. They were marked, they were listed, some of them were huge and we climbed them.
The company I worked for had an office there but I mostly worked for them out of town all over Northern California and Nevada. The owner moved me where he needed me. The big trees were not in Grass Valley, they were farther up north past Downieville way up in the mountains. The only climber I really remember from Grass Valley was a guy named Richard Carlson. A little guy with a big heart.

 

[madhatte]

This is turning out to be a very interesting thread. Wish I'd seen it sooner, but I seldom venture out of the F&L and Chainsaw forums.

My US$0.02: pretty nearly every sale I've seen go down on the ownership where I work has gone to one or another of a handful of local outfits. There are all kinds of reasons for this, but the big one is Economy Of Scale. Nobody can afford to hire, transport, and equip a crew that has to move very far to work, and the old "Timber Tramp" world is shrinking faster than MySpace's market share in 2009. So: we have scrappy local companies that tough it out to make a living. Most of them are small -- ten people or less -- and DON'T hire anybody because there's no turnover and no margin for growth. When I was younger, just about anybody could get a job setting chokers and work their way up the hill. Nowadays, that's not the case. Another thing that's changed as companies have shrunk is that job descriptions have gotten broader as jobs have gotten scarcer. Nobody is JUST a chaser any more -- there's too much else to do now that there's nobody else doing it. The work hasn't changed, but the job has.

Of course, I'm a forestry guy and can only speak for what I've seen in the field. However, in my world, things have shrunk even faster. No timber sales means there is no need for sale administrators, cruisers, planters, etc -- so we're all barely hanging on. I'm doing pretty well, but I've been fortunate. I took a hiatus of several years when the ass fell out of contract cruising in the late 90's which ended up with me doing a few years in the Navy. When I came back to the woods, it was a different world.

 

[RandyMac]

North of Downieville, didn't think I left any big trees north of 49. I sure as #### would have remembered a 15'dia, 300 foot tree.

 

[expertech]

North of Downieville, didn't think I left any big trees north of 49. I sure as #### would have remembered a 15'dia, 300 foot tree.

Oh they are up there. Between Bassetts station and Eagle lakes was where the big ones were. Of course that was 20 years ago and who knows what has been logged out since then. I seriously doubt you would have hiked in where we had to. Nobody that far out.

 

[RandyMac]

Oh they are up there. Between Bassetts station and Eagle lakes was where the big ones were. Of course that was 20 years ago and who knows what has been logged out since then. I seriously doubt you would have hiked in where we had to. Nobody that far out.

Enough with the BS, I lived at Yuba Pass in the 80s, I know a great deal about that area, I ranged far and wide, on foot, on snowshoes. Go peddle your crap somewhere else.

 

[Gologit]

North of Downieville, didn't think I left any big trees north of 49. I sure as #### would have remembered a 15'dia, 300 foot tree.

You didn't leave very many...and what you left is darn hard to get to. :hmm3grin2orange:

We took quite a bit of piss fir and some good stands of red fir in the higher country toward Downievile but I can't remember any 15/300 Ponderosa or Doug. If it was going to be anywhere it would be on those south facing slopes down toward the flats from Cal-Ida and on the sunny side of the ridges toward Devil's Post Pile. I've been through there quite a bit but I don't reckon I've seen every inch of it.

Nothing from Bassett's either...either on up the river or over the hill to Cromberg. There could be trees like that but I can't for the life of me picture very many that would be 5' where they were topped if they were topped high at all.

There's still some nice P-Pine on FS ground above Bullards Bar but nobody has cut anything in there, for any reason, since the mid 70s. No eagle nests.


But hey, maybe I just missed seeing some of that big stuff. And missed hearing about it, too. Guys tend to talk about trees like that. For years afterward. And I know for sure that if I'd ever topped anything that was still 5' across a couple of hundred feet up I would have darn sure found some way to get pictures. Or at least some documentation.


Edit...I just made some phone calls. Talked to a couple of fossils who have been around here longer than me. They're both in their 80s and they've both logged up here all their lives. When I asked them about the 15/300 pine or DF they had a good laugh.

 

[redprospector]

But hey, maybe I just missed seeing some of that big stuff. And missed hearing about it, too. Guys tend to talk about trees like that. For years afterward.

Do trees like that continue to grow for years afterward too?

Andy

 

[RandyMac]

Do trees like that continue to grow for years afterward too?

Andy

Yes.

 

[redprospector]

Yes.

Well, that put's a whole new light on things.

Andy

 

[RandyMac]

Well, that put's a whole new light on things.

Andy

Fishermen are worse.

 

[Gologit]

Do trees like that continue to grow for years afterward too?

Andy

The trees grow, the ground gets steeper, the brush gets thicker, the side rod gets meaner, the bull buck gets crankier, the owners get cheaper, the truck drivers get dumber, the roads get rougher, the weather gets worse, the forester gets more confused, and the cute new waitress at the coffee shop pays less attention to us with each passing year.

 

[Gologit]

Fishermen are worse.

They get more practice.

 

[redprospector]

Fishermen are worse.

No way!

Andy