A-frame logging

[John Ellison]

Here is a pic of an A-frame logging show that I worked on in the early 80s. There is the raft of logs, the boom boat, the yarder, and the flip-float where the logs are landed (on the water) until there is enough for a bundle, then they are banded and flipped off the float into the water. this was on Dall Island, southeast Alaska.

John

 

[John Ellison]

Rick Z. Yarder engineer who was killed a few years later in a bizzare shoot out at an anchorage in Thorne Arm.

 

[John Ellison]

This is the first spar tree up the mountain from the a-frame. After the a-frame had logged all it could reach from the shore or about 1000', this first spar tree was rigged. As it logged the area around it the wood was either decked up in a huge stackor cold deck. Sometimes it was immediatly swung down the hill to the a-frame.

John

 

[John Ellison]

Moving the sled yarder up the hill.

 

[John Ellison]

Greg Lynch, hooktender/ climber at about 110' hanging the main line block.

 

[John Ellison]

Here I am.

 

[John Ellison]

View from the cold deck at the spar tree.

John

 

[John Ellison]

John

 

[MasterBlaster]

A lot of good pics, John! Thanks for posting em!

 

[lostone]

Great pics, thanks for posting them.

 

[rmihalek]

Great pictures John.

What was the "flow" of the logs? My guess is that a logger would fell the tree, it would get pulled by cable to the spar tree and stacked on the cold deck and then the A-frame machine would skid the logs down the hillside to the water.

 

[John Ellison]

That right Bob, a unit or block of timber is cut and then the equipment is moved in. On a cold deck the logs are not swung down to the A frame until later. They are just stacked in a semi-circle around the tree.

John

 

[John Ellison]

Any hi-lead loggers will get a kick out of this. Look at the third post attachment,1tree. We were on some bad ground, had broke all the chokers but one, so I put an eye in the longest broken one and shackeled it to the butt hook. We got thru the day and the boss flew to town the next day for more chokers.

 

[clearance]

Cool pictures John, the only A-frame pictures I had seen before were of a steam yarder. Awesome way to log, just move around on the water, no roads needed. I am on the Queen Charlottes, just south of Prince of Wales Island, Alaska. Lots of A-frames worked here, but I think they are outlawed now.