Let’s Get Those Last Two Big Logs Cut Off the Trail

Tuesday March 12, 2024 Guerneville CA.

It rained last night but stopped this morning so stuff is a little wet. It looked like it was going to be a nice day and it was.

I gassed and oiled the chainsaw and put it on the quad runner so I could ride up the trail again.

The plan

My plan was to cut that big madrone tree off the trail.

I went under this one and might cut it out later if I have enough gas left to do it.

I continued up the trial to this one or two. It’s one tree with two trunks coming out of the stump.

Make the cut

The plan is to cut the one out on the ground and leave the other one to go under as the one in the air is too dangerous to cut safely.

I made the first cut on the left and it didn’t go anywhere so I cut out the upper piece so I could push the log down the hill which I did.

Fixed the trail

Now that I had that log out of the way, the trail needed to be fixed up a bit to go under the other log.

I worked on the trial for a bit until I got it looking like this. Much better.

That’s good for now, I’ll work on the trail some more at a later time.

After that, I worked my way back down the trail working on small stuff as I went.

Other big log

I made it back to the other log I went under on the way up. The saw had enough gas to get the job done on this one, but I wasn’t sure I had enough gas, but I gave it a try.

Hard one

This one is a hard one as I’m not sure which way the log forces are going on this one as it’s hung up in the trees on the right. Those forces determine how the log will react when I cut it and knowing the forces can be important for safety reasons. I almost didn’t do this one as I wasn’t sure what might happen.

I made the first cut near the rear of the quad runner but the cut pinched closed so I couldn’t get the log to break free, but I did see which way the force was going, towards the quad runner. To be safe, I made the next cut up near the stump as I knew the log wouldn’t move too much near the stump. That cut went well and the log just fell to the ground.

I made the third cut at this point and got the saw’s bar pinched in the cut and stuck.

The bar is stuck solid and can’t be pulled out. I knew the cut was almost through the log as I heard a crack when the saw got stuck, so I jumped up and down on the log and it cracked a bit and moved enough for me to forcefully pull the bar out of the log and was able to cut it the rest of the way through.

When I cut the log out of the middle, the piece on the right went up in the air which was ok as now it was out of the way. I rolled the short log off the trail and headed for home.