Tree removal trail maintenance

 A very large tree fell down across the trails by me 24 inches in diameter. Luckily it branched into two 18 inch limbs just to the right of the trail crossing. I can handle the 18 inch limbs with my 12 inch battery chainsaw but would never attempt the 24 inch main trunk.

Last log to remove on the trail

 My trail connecting loops 2 and 3 is almost done. Storms last year dropped lots of trees which took a while to clear. This one is 20 inches in diameter and since my chainsaw is only 12 inches it's left a chuck of uncut wood at the bottom. One side is completely through as you can tell by the log resting on the ground. The other side I've cut thru twice and still have work to do. Probably will need to use my 18 inch pruning saw when it is a little cooler and I don't have social engagements in the evening. 

 

When I left on May 23 there was water lapping at the bottom of the log. Amazingly now that the water has gone there really aren't that many mosquitos out. I don't always need my headnet.

The inch wide cutout is laying to the left

More trail maintenence

 Pretty much cleared and rerouted the trail, 50 yards on the ditch bank until I could get to the interior. Other logs awaited clearing now that my battery chainsaw is working again.

I  started this last fall, then the California and New Mexico trips interfered.

This has been down quite a while, finally got to it

16 inch log. First day got thru two cuts 95% of the way thru before the battery quit

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I don't have the one arm strength to get this stump and root ball up to my shoulder to get it pivoted out of the way.

 

Trail on ditchbank

More trail on ditchbank

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

More trail on ditchbank, great challenge for your balance. Yeah, it is sloped pretty good.

 

Bound up the chainsaw, luckily the other cut to the left was 98% thru so I could complete it with the handsaw.

 

Had to double cut it to not bind the saw, probably spent an hour at this one cut

3 3    Three more 12-14 inch logs to cut through yet. They will have to until after my Maine trip and the trip to Boston for the NCAA Frozen Four.

Trail destruction, reconstruction and rerouting

 The trail I've been working on the past couple years to connect the second and third loops runs close to the the Remy Chandler drain/ditch. A couple days ago I saw a guy running a very large backhoe scraping the ditch clean, thought nothing of it. The next day a 50 yard section of the trail was covered in trees and brush. In order to make sure the ditch doesn't fill in too quickly the bucket was used to push the brush and dead trees up the opposite bank where the impromptu trail runs. I will have to reroute the trail on the ditchbank for a while until an opening to the interior presents itself. This is a natural area so there are no official maintained trails.

The trail running north

The trail running south

The cleaned out ditch. You can see the orange spot on the tree marking the trail

Trail maintenance

 Windstorms knocked down a few more trees leaving me lots of work to do. Luckily friend Bret unkinked my battery powered chainsaw chain making it usable again. One handed it was impossible to unkink. This 124 acre natural area next to me is a godsend for getting my daily exercise and forest bathing.  Lots of turkeys and deer back there.

This 16 inch log I'm going to leave because you can easily get around the right side.

This 18 inch log required two separate trips because of running out of battery power. Had to cut thru from both sides, it is now fully cut thru but may have to enlarge the cuts so I can get it rolled out.

Bound the chainsaw on this cut, had to use my pruning saw to hand cut this 6 inch log.

Future tree to be cut thru yet

Future tree to be cut thru yet

Future tree to be cut thru yet

Future tree to be cut thru yet

The trail was going thru here, will have to reroute.

Existing trail needing clearing

Existing trail needing clearing

Existing trail needing clearing, you can see this is a popular place for trees to fall down.

Bleeding like a stuck pig

 Aspirin definitely works to thin the blood.Doing my normal 9000 step walk thru the woods, it was in the section I'm clearing and doesn't yet have all the little miniscule saplings removed yet. So since the left arm has zero ability to move out of the way it sometimes gets dragged thru brush.  Today was the day, didn't notice it until I stopped again to clear stuff and my pant leg was red striped. I had no bandages or bandanas along so I turned around and headed for home. Since my arm does not hang straight due to spasticity it brushes against the leg constantly. That spasticity I blame directly on the stroke medical world not solving it. 

In the five minutes of walking to take this picture it was no longer striped, could feel the wetness on my leg

3 major streams coming out

4 major bleeders yet after 30minutes of walking

10 punctures in total

Took forever to get the dried blood off a spastic clamped hand.

Oops, running blood

 Today while clearing some trail with my pruning saw I must have nicked my left hand. Only noticed it when looking down and seeing spots of blood on my pants. Didn't feel it running down my fingers. My left hand has zero grasping ability for small items like a handkerchief so I'm unable to wrap my hand and hold it in place to prevent further dripping.

Finally, morels

 In the 7 years I'm been looking for morels this is only the second year I found some. Was working on clearing a new trail, the chain came off my chainsaw and I sat down with it in my lap trying to get the chain in the bar grooves, making sure the chain engages the sprockets and then use that one hand to put the plastic housing on and screw the toggle down. Spent at least a half hour there failing at least a dozen times.  Finally looked out and saw a morel 6 feet away. Packed away the chainsaw in pieces, then walked around the area finally picking up 15 morels. Will head out there again tomorrow.

Splinter removal failures

 As I'm clearing brush from the trails my right hand acquires lots of splinters. With zero ability to grasp anything small like a knife or tweezers in my left hand, I'm forced to wait until a little pool of pus surrounds it and softens it. Then I can use the sharp point of my bathroom mirror to break the pustule and hopefully squeeze the splinter out with the pus. Gloves are only worn in cold weather. I did finally figure out how to take timed pictures so I could lay down the phone and position my hand above it. It only took a dozen tries to finally get the picture mostly correctly focused. 

4 splinters in this picture, if I had the technical knowhow I could have added arrows to them.

Extensive trail clearing

 I had to bushwack around this tree before I cleaned it up yesterday, no way I could clamber over this with any amount of safety. I was surprised, my battery powered chainsaw lasted all 30 minutes it took to clear this.  Only once did I bind the blade, had to finish the cut from the underside with my handsaw. It was multi-trunked and already budding out so not a totally dead tree, but we had a lot of wind recently. Rolling the chunks out of the way one-handed was a challenge

Before

After

Trail clearing

 My old battery chainsaw was 20 volts and the battery only held power for 3 minutes. Being a lithium battery, 'Batteries are us', will not fix it and I didn't think I could follow the Youtube instructions. So I bought a 40 volt one. There were three large logs across the trails and I needed to get them cleared for possible cross country skiing. So about 25 minutes in total and still some power left, what you can do with proper and sharp tools. Luckily I have enough power in one arm/hand to get these logs rolled out of the way.

As a friend told me; 'Now you can do your manly things like a man.'

The 3x6 inch partial branch in the left foreground took 4 passes with the old chainsaw to get thru.

The next 7 inch large branch took 5 minutes to get thru.

8 minutes to get thru the complete log and get it rolled away.

This was a 12 inch log to get thru which is the size of the bar

This was a 9 inch log to get thru, maybe 5 minutes.

This was another 9 inch log to get thru, maybe 5 minutes.

Tree clearing on trails

Finally got my electric chainsaw working. I have to clear some major trees yet. I don't trust my ability to use my gas chainsaw and a friend has threatened to steal the gas one. Both of these are a 20 minute walk to get to. I get to see turkeys way back here.

Only about 12 inches in diameter

The major trunk is 18 inches in diameter, I will work on the smaller upper half.

Trail clearing

In order to keep the trails in the 124 acre natural area walkable and xc skiable I have to keep after the logs across the trails. My 12 inch electric chainsaw seized up a couple of years ago and is no longer useable. My 16 inch gas chainsaw is not something I want to try.  So I'm left with a 13 inch curved pruning saw. I've tackled 14 in. logs with it, and bound it up many times. After the trails are cleared of the big stuff, I started cutting down the invasive buckthorn trees.  In late October, these trees are the only ones still having green leaves. In the 5 miles of trails there must be thousands of buckthorn trees, from 1 in to 6 in diameter.

This twin trunked tree is causing me lots of problems, for one it is lying on the ground, not able to cut from below

Managed to get the remnant moved but will have to cut that same log again for the trail.

 

I had to cut thru this one twice because the cuts bound the saw multiple times, lucky I was on this side when it fell down.

Could just cut from the top on this one since it was hanging in the air, only 10 in. diameter

Got thru one side of this one and tried to lever it out of the way, one-handed levering doesn't work for this size log. Had to cut thru the log again, that 5 foot log is moveable with one hand.

This took a bit of cutting in the correct order, top down.

Stumps of buckthorn

Buckthorn berries

Cute mushrooms in this wet fall

More mushrooms growing amongst the moss