By the lift you get from a spar you can continue moving your work well beyound it, even uphill. It's easy enough to do so long as there's suitable trees where you wish the work to be directed. I once won a bet with a guy doing this.
The spar for our highlead was a Douglas fir, and about 30 feet below the truck road. The block was set about 80 feet and the bulline directed to the power implement through another block. The slope was steep and we had a lot of brush to move. On the first turn our engineer, Tom Clifton, stopped pulling when the load came up to the base of the spar. He said, "That's as far as it's going, Jer. Now we're going have to go down and drag it the rest of the way up the hill. This rigging scheme of yours isn't going to save us all that much work.
Tom was imagining back breaking drugery and further on he was telling me my idea had failed in getting the brush up to the road. All the while he was telling me that I was holding a line I just set in an alder tree over the truck road. He seen the rope, but hadn't a clue what it was for.
I stepped off the road edge and slide on my buttocks down to the fir and snapped the end of the line from the alder to the bulline. "Click" I went back up to the hill. Tom asked me, "Now what is that rope going to do? We're still going to have to do some grunt work. Admit, Jer. You screwed up on this one." Tom giggled with delight at the thought that I missed something in the details. He liked to do that. I told him, "I'll bet you, Tom, we can get all that brush up to the chipper, without having to pull or drag any of it by hand. A bright spark lit in Tom's eye and he said, You're, on, Jer! Oh, boy, this is going to be good." Tom was rubbing his hands and smiling from ear to ear."
The system was all set and I told Tom, "Take up on the bulline! Tom come back, "Take up on the bulline? Yes, that's what I said, Tom. And I said it again. "Take up the bulline!" Tom come back again, "Jer, all that's going to do is haul the brush up the tree. Yeah, that's right, Tom. Now do it! And don't stop until I tell you to!"
And so, with question, wonder and much doubt, Tom enguaged the clutch and began lifting the brush. And as it went ever higher up that fir tree the line coming from the alder become ever shorter. "Stop'er right there!" I yelled out. I then drew the slack from the line in the alder and made it fast. "Now, start slacking the bulline, Tom."
This is where Tom realized he lost the bet. As Tom slacked the bulline the "tag line" from the alder drew the works over the truck road and laid the brush behind the chipper. Even before it got that far Tom was in death throws agonizing over the knowledge of having lost the bet.
In spite of the contentions in the story Tom and I were really best of friends. He just didn't know, "You don't bet on another mans game". The rest of that day went without anyone having to drag a stick of brush.
Took a few edits to clean this story up.
