Had a fun little project the other day, so time to bump this thread up again.
This was a long-dead, mid-sized doug fir that had broken at the base, was hanging onto the stump by just a few inches worth of fibrous wood in the still solid center, and leaning into a goofy shaped madrone. For the job I borrowed the new Stihl battery extendable pole-saw, which was great and now I want one...
Overview of the situation. While not as high as I'd have liked, I was able to set a line from the ground into that fir on the right side, which gave me a perfect rope angle.
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It's a decent sized tree with a lot of weight leaning into the madrone. A rather precarious situation.
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A closer look at the base and angles. This one was kind of interesting to me because usually doug firs here are very good at standing dead and usually just crumble from the top down while staying upright.
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Freshly rebuilt 200T and HTA 85 polesaw hanging on the belt. Awkward especially with two climbing lines and a flipline on top of that, but was what was needed for the work.
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With an SRT line in the fir behind me, I climbed up the madrone with my flipline and DRT rope-sleeve so I could stay supported at opposing angles and away from the underside of the fir in case it let loose on it's own. Limbed the fir with the battery polesaw as I went up. Oh, and yah, wet madrones are SLIPPERY.
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Taking the top using the HTA 85. With no higher to climb in the madrone, the goal was to cut the top out and get it to fall past and over the limbs I was standing on and the tree was resting on. This would have been an almost impossibly large cut to make with a manual polesaw, and very hard with my much heavier gas polesaw.
Always a nice feeling to get that top weight out.
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With the top gone, I could then cut the trunk with the 200T and get it to the last bit of support. A single 2.5" limb was all this entire log was resting on. (that fir limb on the back side is cut free)
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Here is the final cut. I just lightly tickled the limb until I could see movement and get my saw away. Fell underneath the madrone perfectly.
Everything on the ground, no cleanup, walk away happy.
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