Pruning a Veteran Fir Tree

today i'm out in the souk start of a two-day job that's the sign welcome to e-souk it's a beautiful area look it up on um on the on the web if you get a minute uh it's really nice place i work here quite a lot and uh this is the start of a of a two-day job today i'm on my own tomorrow i'll have someone with me and uh there's several trees coming down i think um i'll remember when i get there um but also there is this old gnarly fir tree on the seafront um which is decayed way up it's a big section of decayed top up there and um there's all kinds of cavities and rot in in the tree there's two others beside it i noticed which are drastically shorter because um they've blown out in the wind so we don't want that to happen to this one too so we're gonna intervene shorten the top reduce the leverage there won't be much of a response from the tree because it's it's it's really ill it's not gonna grow like loads of tops back or anything like that but um we're intervening in the in the positive way i think because what we wouldn't want to happen is just to leave it and then it fails much further down so we can just reduce like the top quarter or something like that it'll it'll hang on to life and and it's a cool old tree and that's why the owner wants to save it it's it has a lot of character it's not huge not like some of the ones i've videoed some of the ones i've removed it's nothing like that but but it's it's a gnarly old thing and it's it's it's quite nice so um hopefully i can manage this on my own it would be better to have somebody with me but that's just not the way it is today so um we'll drive there now and and get set up and [Music] see how it goes all right so that's our tree get a bit closer this chunk just came out this year i think there's a big old limb it's falling off it's not very nice on the four i'm gonna have to play some of this yeah it's not very good perspective from me it's kind of leaning this way i think is it because i'm on the bank it looks like it's leaning this way i don't know it's about 110 feet maybe a bit more to where the tops died well anyway it doesn't matter so we're not bothered about any of this of the clutter low down we just want to shorten the top see there's the other ones there you see trees of similar age and size two of them tops have blown out in the past this first one looks like it has no life at all on it but the other one is survived and there's foliage growing still from the lower limbs so it's good to see and then the rest here is all second growth not much to look at really so i think you see that uh big limb there where is it there i think we'll uh get the big shot um the throw line through there and i'll ascend up to there i'll just leave that as an access line then i'll use a second line to go up higher where my finger is and take that top down so uh yeah the top's probably bigger than it looks i just hope it's favored and it's gonna fall off in the right direction um so i bet you that's up there is that'll be two feet two and a half feet across where we'll make the cuts i just hope that there's some strength in it so i can safely get it the right way and that was a bit of a lean but we'll see anyway we'll see when we get over there i can always get down and rethink it well i'm hoping that i can do that without any kind of pull line all right oh we're close not close enough that's the one [Applause] so i'm a little ways out with the line on the limb because it's sloping down how strong is the limb i mean it's thick but we've had one just as thick that's ripped out of here recently so and there's the hole from it so we just don't know i mean probably doesn't sound like a satisfactory answer you know we don't know if it's safe so um but unfortunately that's a lot of tree work especially on old veteran trees like this one and um you really relying on your experience and intuition and mine tells me that i'll be okay to get to there and i'm mid air on the underside of the lean so i'll probably leave me saw here tie it on and then i'll pull it up when i get to that limb assuming it doesn't crash down on top of me because that'll be the end of this video um so this somebody sent me this uh this was sent by tree stuff it's not something i would normally buy um and it's uh yeah it's fantastic for a sense temperamental depending on what line you're using which i've found out this line is uh samsung velocity works great the other line that i've got is it works terrible which i can't remember what it's called i'm going to need a second line to take with me up there so i can continue past this redirect on the the access line so this should have a rubber stopper there this side is okay but that side should have a rubber ring and i just couldn't find it before when i was looking i'm only going to the first limbs so i should be okay i also don't normally wear gloves but um i noticed a load of raccoon down there that's not something you want to put your hands in let alone run into a raccoon because they're never pleased to see you so do that's the tear out we just need ours to wait a few more seconds before it says i can just get on this branch i'll feel a bit better even oh see the angle seems like it's primed to collapse just don't go yet i don't know what that piece of dead wood was that fell before right yeah i think that's that was a risky move on my part dragging into this piece i want to get on some of these stubs in a sec that's not good union all right now i'm safe so where did that limb break from fell before i don't know this is got some life in it be all right so i'm not gonna hang all my weight off it just give me a bit of leverage to get on top take this one off ah ah wow [Music] um [Music] ah so just in the top now we have this final log to knock down maybe a little bit end weight reduction on some of the old limbs but but i'll just take this section off here my gear looks a bit closer than what i thought so um hopefully i don't crush anything so this is the soup basin behind me that you can see it's uh all salt water beautiful area like i say this this goes right out into the wonderful straight or is it the strait of georgia i can't remember what they call it anyway it's one of the two it's kind of merges from one to the other um yeah it's funny a family member was questioning why i would ever want to move to canada the suggestion being that it was this terrible place full of terrible people well it looks alright from where i'm standing you know isn't it funny how family do that to you you know not all of them but some of them seem to make it their mission to try and undermine you undermine your decisions your preferences your ambition everything always trying to just you know pull the rug from under your feet it's um disappointing but i'm sort of immune to it by now and i'd do my own thing anyway let's get this so ah um um so hmm wow [Music] so so so so so so so so you

Channel: Reg Coates

Views: 14,120

Rating: 4.9712644 out of 5

Keywords: Tree work, Climbing Arborist, Tree falling, Tree Surgeon, Vancouver Island

Id: rYNOZOSQn98

Length: 23min 52sec (1432 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 02 2021