Running 27:57 [3] 2.75 mi (10:10 / mi)
weight:165.5lbs
Art Sweeton loop with Hazel. Tired from all the yard work, but felt ok.
Note
packed up the brush mower and took it over to the land trust property on Sweetheart Mtn to tidy up some overgrown clearings, the parking area and the lower part of the trail.
Then back home to visit with Michael, who was clearing the eastern clearcut for a meadow. Rhonda ordered a bunch of wildflower seed - I'll spread it tomorrow or Thursday.
Then chain saw work in the eastern corner of the side field, in preparation for Michael clearing out to left road. Did the center yesterday and the east today. Tomorrow will try to finish up on the west.
Confidently tried to exercise one of the techniques I learned at chain saw school, but had a little trouble in execution and got into some mischief. The technique in question involves using a wedge to fell a tree in a direction opposite to the direction the tree is leaning. Properly executed, the technique works as follows.
1. Make a face cut perpendicular to the line I want it to fall on and facing the direction of the fall. A face cut is a near vertical cut in a downward direction, and a near horizontal cut to meet the first cut, removing a wedge.
2. Facing the face cut, make a plunge cut through the tree centered at the point the face cut facets meet.
3. Make another plunge cut part way through just above the first plunge cut, to get a little more depth.
4. Lightly hammer in a wedge from the rear until it is tight.
5. Cut the sides under the wedge, leaving about a 1" hinge next to the face cut on each side.
6. Hammer the wedge to lever the tree up and over.
So what went wrong? I was hammering away and the tree wasn't moving. Turns out I had not cut far enough through on step 5 on one side, leaving a much more substantial hinge there than on the other side. Therefore the tree couldn't lever over the hinge. Eventually, vigorous hammering broke the smaller hinge and sent the tree 90 degrees away from the direction I had in mind, landing hung up in a very dead oak.
After calming down I cut off successive pieces from the bottom, hoping that eventually I'd get the tree short enough that it would work its way out of the dead oak, but eventually it was just hanging there hung up and dangling. Thought about trying to take the oak down, but that was way too scary. Didn't know where the oak was going to go, and didn't know where the dangling maple would end up either. I definitely did not want to be running my saw at the bottom of that mess.
So I got out my mountain golf cart and hooked up the winch to try to pull the maple out of the oak, but then the oak started wobbling, which was pretty scary too. Eventually releasing the winch and pulling again and releasing again and pulling again did pull the maple out. The oak is looking like a stiff wind will take it down, but that's another issue, and probably not a problem given the way it is now leaning.