Well right after
@evo and I were talking about how madrones almost never uproot, here was one that did. To be fair it was growing up against a rock face, had literally NO roots on the entire tension side of the tree, was like 70' tall and was growing at a 60* angle.
Anyways, it
very slowly tipped over and laid gently down on the house, with the top reaching about 25' beyond the other side of the building. Literally the only damage was like two dented wood shingles. It didn't even touch the peak of the roof, floating just about 4" above it where it stopped. Talk about lucky. Set a high climbing line in the big fir from the ground, made some redirects on the madrone so I could walk on the slippery roof, and lowered the brush off the water side of the house, basically down 2.5 stories to where the hot tub was. Given the wide roof and lack of rigging options I had to go small, and partly walk pieces down to the edge of the roof and help lower them over the edge by hand which was time consuming, but zero impact.
When it came time to lift the log off, I was going to use my truck but pull out the slack/stretch in the system with the 5:1 first since I didn't have a lot of room to move and waste. We started 'taking up the slack' and next thing I know, I look over and the whole log had already lifted off the house! For something as heavy and at as low an angle as this was, I did not expect it to lift off so easily! Between that, a second rigging line on a porty to control swing, and then facing it to fold away from the house, it popped off the stump and we simultaneously lowered it to the ground.
Cool project and excellent scenery. Didn't get any raven or eagle photos, but they were flying around as we worked.
