Tim-ber!

Our time up here is growing short. A couple of our larger projects will need to wait until the spring, but this one couldn't wait any longer. We have been waiting a year to get rid of these sad looking pine trees that are not only dying, but block our sight line from the driveway. Now that Hercules has recovered, we finally took care of this task. We certainly didn't want the trees to fall on the pool house or our new lamppost, and of course not in the road. Dave climbed and attached his pulling rope (more like the size of a ship's hawser) and we led it around another tree, so we could control the speed it fell.

Then Herc took up the slack and Dave chainsawed.

The theory didn't work out as well as expected since the tree pivoted 180 degrees on the rope, but it fell in a better spot than we had planned. That worked for us and was easier to haul away the logs.

Karl and Jim showed up just in time for the next bigger tree. Thanks guys! Great minds at work.

I had to stand as a go-between and relay person, because Dave, who was in Herc pulling the tree from the woods, and Karl who was cutting, couldn't see each other. Unfortunately the tree got caught in the other trees on the way down, so Dave and Herc had to pull it down and out.

 Hercules has so much power that it ended up taking another tree down with it. Oh well, less to rake.

The last tree was an easy one, except that it was close to the road. Jim had to be a traffic spotter, just in case it fell wrong. No problem this time though.

Wow, can we see better now...inside, outside, and up the street!