Addicted to Disaster

Went down to Ashland after my Lynchburg trip to get a tree done in the remnants of Ida. It was a rainy day but I had a good feeling going into the job. I don't know, I guess I just wanted to bring something down after the week of work. I had forgotten the lesson Dave and I learned the last time we climbed on Friday the 13th.

Schwartz came over to help and we started straightaway on the tree at 15:00 on Friday at my grandmother's house. As you can see below, it was a maple with a lot of leaders in all random directions fanning out from the base of the tree. The only complicating factor was that there were phone and cable lines hanging under the tree on the house side and an electrical line going to my parents' house running acrosss the driveway side of the tree.


Got to work dropping the stuff on the house-side first, and anything I could reach with ease with the ladder. Knocked a piece of trim off the house when a limb got caught on the cable line and yanked it loose. No damage to the line, and the trim was re-nailed to the house with ease, but left the lines loose from the mount to keep them as far out of the way as possible.

We got a good deal of the wood off the back side of the tree except for one troublesome leader towards the house lines. It was getting dark, and we thought we might be able to drop the tree without hitting anything. The neighbor had a come-along that we could pull away from the house with, so I notched the tree and we hooked it up. As I was getting ready to do the backcut, I noticed a lamp post that would definitely get toasted if I dropped the tree as-is. Plus, some of the top of the tree looked awfully close to the house and those branches, though small, could bust a window or two if the tree didn't fall the right way. As I was debating this, the neighbor pulled up in his front-loader to butt up against the tree to keep it from twisting and falling on the house, and got it stuck in the wet ground from the week of rain. The picture below was from the next morning.


Well, things are going well at this point. I have a notched tree tied to my dad's truck, which is parked on wet, muddy ground. I have buried heavy equipment directly under the limbs I need to cut in order to relieve weight from the house-side and back to ensure that nothing goes wrong. And, it's dark. Schwartz, Dad, and I cut until about 19:00 to get one more big leader over the power line off the back of the tree. In the picture below, I am in the tree. Can you see me?


Well, with the weight off of the back of the tree, I can rest easy knowing that if the tree falls, it won't fall on the front-loader or the house. Katy calls and her train's engine is broken. She gets a refund from Amtrak, takes the Metro home, and drives down to Ashland. When she pulls in, I have to direct her where to park to avoid the tensioned stell cable and the fall zone of the tree. Good old Friday the 13th!

We hit the sack around midnight, knowing there's plenty of work to do in the morning. Since I still want to drop some limbs off, I trimmed a few small branches in the morning, and then we set to freeing the front-loader from the yard. Larry had to raise the side with the bucket and backhoe so we could get timber underneath the wheels, which were dug in two to three feet. The front was resting on the frame in the morning.

After several tries, timbers just weren't doing it. The other end even dug in.

We ended up having to build a bridge of plywood and timber on the bad side. On the far side, we piled wood chunks from the tree underneath the wheel. Finally, he was able to drive out. The damage is shown below. Underneath that plywood is a three foot deep by seven foot long gash in the yard.


Now I could turn my attention back to the tree and drop all the house-side limbs with extreme care. Remember that the notch is already cut in this tree, and it is still windy from Ida. I used a thirty foot extension ladder to get into place for the troublesome limbs.

Larry also had a Stihl polesaw which came in extremely handy for this type of tree. I was climbing to the top of the ladder, tying in with two fliplines, rigging ropes to pull the limbs away from the house, then notching and cutting them while the ground crew pulled. On the second day, nothing was hit. All the limbs fell perfect and they were posing much more danger to the house than the ones I cut on Friday.


The chunk below fell and buried itself perfectly upright. Wish I had a video of it falling.


Finally it was time to drop the tree. We don't have a video, but below is a picture just as it starts to go over. I made the back-cut and wedged it over just to be sure. Dad was able to pull it over by hanging from the steel cable after I wedged it. Successful drop with no damage to the lamp post that was directly in the tree's path the previous evening.

Needless to say, I was very relieved to have it on the ground, finally, and with no incident.



Celebrated by showing Katy how to start and use the chainsaw. Maybe I can get her to become a Bettica Services, LLC regular. I won't hold my breath, though. . .