Dead "Wolf" Pine Tree

chris_girard

chris_girard

Branched out member
Location
Gilmanton, N.H.
Dead \"Wolf\" Pine Tree

Tree job from this summer. Logger and developer cleared a couple of house lots 10 years ago and left this dead White Pine standing, instead of just dropping it like they should have done. Now there is no room to do a flop and drop. To close to the property line with leach field and power lines in the way. Bad access for crane and too tall for bucket truck. What I really didn’t like about this tree was that there weren’t any trees near by that I could safely tie into. Just small secondary growth around it now.
 

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Re: Dead \"Wolf\" Pine Tree

Pic 2 I decided to climb and reinforce it as I went along. As I ascended, I would remove branches and secure the stems together with long (20’-30’) spider leg slings.
 

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Re: Dead \"Wolf\" Pine Tree

This is what the tops looked like. Very dead. I was able to top each one of the leaders out individually, while having my climb line secured in one of the other leaders.
 

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Climb line secured in topped out leader. After the tops were out, I cut 4’ sections down in the 3 leaders, until I got down low enough to fell the remaining stem.
 

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Re: Dead \"Wolf\" Pine Tree

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
That looks like it kinda sucked.

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same thing I thought

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For sure!

Good Job Chris! Nice pics. Job well done
smile.gif
put it in the books
 
Re: Dead \"Wolf\" Pine Tree

Nice job, Chris. One of those that makes you feel like a million bucks when its over.
 
Re: Dead \"Wolf\" Pine Tree

Do you know what it died from? You mentioned it was dead 10 years ago. How did you know it was safe to climb? I liked the precautionary safety measures; binding strap, tying the spars together. 32" bar. That's a big white pine! Glad you made to the ground safely.
 
Re: Dead \"Wolf\" Pine Tree

[ QUOTE ]
Do you know what it died from? You mentioned it was dead 10 years ago. How did you know it was safe to climb? I liked the precautionary safety measures; binding strap, tying the spars together. 32" bar. That's a big white pine! Glad you made to the ground safely.

[/ QUOTE ]

Norm, my guess is that the loggers who cleared the land around this tree left it because it was a lone wolf Pine (large multi-stem tree, usually at the edge of clear cuts or fields), that didn’t have any lumber that was marketable. The people that I did the work for said that the tree was dead when they moved there 10 years ago. Their new neighbors are the ones that were really concerned about it. My suspicions are that it died from all the root disturbance that went on during the logging as well as the leach fields that were put in around it.

The steps that I took to determine that it was safe to climb were first sounding it to check for cavities/hollows in the butt. I did this all around the trunk, as well as from a ladder up to where the trunk started to split out into different leads. I also drilled in a number of locations around the trunk to get an idea of the condition of the wood.

The tree was dead and crispy, but it wasn’t “spongy”. I was VERY concerned with the split in it, as well as the brittleness of the leaders and therefore decided to use the load binder strap and spider leg slings to lace everything together in order to have them work with each other, instead of oscillating back in forth in different directions as I was climbing and cutting.

The only good thing about this job was that I was able to “cut and chuck” all the wood, as there was no way that I would have rigged anything out of it and subjected it to shock loading. When I was a greenhorn, I would have looked at that tree and said, “NO WAY that I’m climbing that”, but after many years as a climber and rigger, you get a feeling as to what your limits are and more importantly, what the TREE’S limits are. Still, you have to ask yourself…what if?
 
Re: Dead \"Wolf\" Pine Tree

[ QUOTE ]
When I was a greenhorn, I would have looked at that tree and said, “NO WAY that I’m climbing that”, but after many years as a climber and rigger, you get a feeling as to what your limits are and more importantly, what the TREE’S limits are.

[/ QUOTE ]

So true. I remember a large lighting struck oak, ALL the bark was blown off the tree by the strike and it had some big splits in it too. I was the ground guy and remember thinking I wouldn't climb it for all the money in the world. Well, the climber took it down without incident, it wasn't rotten at all and he pretty much treated it like a regular tree. The funny thing was that when I bucked the main trunk into firewood, each round fell apart into 4 perfect quarters as each bucking cut was finished. Kinda freaky.
 
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