i use the usual ply wood and what not but had a really really mongrel job with a lot of big wood we had to get over a swamp in winter to load out so i went to my geotextile supplier and i got them to stich together some non spec road mat together so it was double width and double the thickness, chucked a pipe into the swamp and then put the road matting over the ground and the pipe in the swamp and loaded in mulch and spread it about 12-15inches thick expecting to only be able to run the bobtracks over it, but it was better then planned, i was able to get my bandit 65 up to the bottom of the trees, my chip truck that weighs 7ton loaded and my bigger 9 ton truck i use for logs right into the job, i used the same method to get across the paddocks aswell.
i had a road made of mulch 120 odd meters long and 6 meters wide, we could pass the trucks on it with tons of clearance.
all the gear stayed clean of mud, the mulch was gr8 for cutting logs on cause you could cut into it with no worrys, we pulled out around 50 cubic meters of mulch, which is a #### load when you only useing a 6inch machine and we pulled so much timber out i couldnt store it in my yard i had to get rid of it else where. i forget how many tons of logs we pulled.
at the end of the job all we did was gently scrape up the mulch off the matting and keep lifting the matting up and flicking up the mulch to load out on the truck. worked our way out over the swamp pulled my pipe out and tidied it up.
the only way you could tell we were in there was the trees gone and the swamp had some small trenches pushed into it but nothing to worry about, the paddocks were perfectly flat and the grass was only a bit yellow. during the job that lasted 8 days from start to finish 5 of those days it pissed down with rain and we were still going hard in the rain.
