Risky Traverse, Tree measuring, Grand Fir, Vancouver Island

this morning i have to prune uh tall grandfather nothing special about it is a healthy tree actually but it has like quite a dense canopy on the upper quarter of it manifolds do have a tendency to lose their tops and then regrow again but it's it's not in a good spot if that happens and um it's a big hefty heavy tree so the idea is to prune to an extent that the what the tree can tolerate what will reduce the sail effect on the upper canopy if it's thing ever uprooted it would do a lot of damage because it's tall and it's heavy wood um as well it's probably about 130 140 feet or something like that i'm guessing might be less might be 120 but uh certainly no no no less than 120 i would think but we'll measure it anyway if i can get some flat ground there's a one somebody asked me in the last video left a comment because they saw me using a stick to measure the the uh height of the tree or where it was going to land and asked what that was about so i'll show you how to do that maybe lots of people know it anyway it's a simple trick but it's it's actually really accurate if you want to measure the tree's height or you know pace out how far a tree is going to fall so we'll do that but the thing with the grandfather is there's nothing to see there's nothing like uh unusual about the work that we're gonna do um but it's a tricky one to get into because it's very cluttered with small branches you know i mean i say small they look small from the ground and you know maybe only up to four inches across but there's there's like hundreds of them all plugged together it's very difficult to get a throw line into the tree um height and gives you a good advantage and do that confidently you know it's gonna be hard to see where the light has gone how safe it is because it's you know you can set a line in a tree put your rope up hang on the branch and bounce around you know but you really should be able to see where the line is rooted you know because you can test limbs from the ground um and think it's all right but you may have weakened them by doing that certainly by bouncing on the line that's something you have to be wary of as well as that there's every chance when you're firing a throwaway into such a cluttered tree that it's gonna get snagged somehow you know i just know um more often than not when it's worth taking a chance and when it's going to be a complete waste of time and i'm probably going to end up getting the throw line stuck so what i'll do is there is a fur tree adjacent which is a little bit far away i think i can get it with the the grappling hook and traverse across i think that would be simpler in the long run than trying to get the throw line with the big shot into the ground for itself you know if i go if i traverse across at least i can see what i'm throwing at and then make a decision based on how well i managed to snag the grappling hook you know how safe it's going to be um because i'm on my own today dave who's been helping me a little recently is has gone away for the week this is a sort of job i should have somebody with me even though there'd be absolutely nothing for them to do you know other than chip a few branches that are gonna come down you know but if if i need something else while i'm up there if i have a change of plan it's a long way to be up and then um have to come down and then go back up again there's always the safety aspect as well if something does go wrong but uh you know the homeowner is in who could raise the alarm i suppose he's gonna be watching and um that's just a decision a risk i'm prepared to take you know i do have a lot of confidence in myself not that i don't make mistakes weird things can't happen you know i trust myself more than anybody else anyway not far away um 10 minutes so i'll see you when we get there so that's the ground floor that's the douglas fir beside it so about 25 feet and this one's leaning away that's the tree i need to get into and throw the grappling hook across so as you can see how skinny the branches are um when i said four inches before i was actually overshot they're more like two and three so than nothing really um so you see the heavy head on top of the ground further we'd have to step way back to um actually see it but there's like a kink and then it goes up and it's all done so you often see these blown breakout up there but it's he doesn't want that to happen um so we can bring the top by doing some thinning just to reduce the wind resistance it's a shame that fir tree isn't a bit taller but it's going to be still easier to get a line into that throw the grappling hook across hope as long as i'm confident of what it's snagged in and then traverse into it and then i you know i can just go up do the thinning i'm not going to thin this lower section it's just that upper part this has a nice curve to the tree sort of leaning that way which will make it much easier to uh to rope walk because i can get my toes against this and it stops your tendency to tip back so it just means there's a lot less effort involved it'd be like walking up once the line starts uh getting some weight below me i'm not even going to take a chainsaw into that tree i might regret it when i get there because uh grand fir wood is quite hard but i'm just gonna i'm gonna be carrying enough clutter as it is i've got to walk up this rope i have to carry the other line with me that i'll continue on up with um the grappling hook the lanyard and um a little bag for the camera so i'm not going to bother with the chain so i'm not in a rush i do have another job to do across the road later today but um i think i can manage most of this with the hand saw but i'm going to take two off in case i drop one there'll still be less weight than carrying a chainsaw the downside of the lean is that we're much further away at the top than what we were at the bottom i think my line will reach that with the hook on it now if i had a ground worker with me i could throw a throw line up high through the top down to the bottom then pull a climb line up and over but that's not an option so um i've been looking for a space to throw the hook and there's a couple of limbs just in there and the gap i can go over and snag the one underneath now the one underneath is dead but grandfather goes very very hard when it's dead so um it should be strong enough the other thing i've forgotten is a bag to put my climb line in as i traverse across assuming i can get the hook in and i feel safe enough to make the maneuver so the climb line in the bag just means that um there's less resistance when you are moving across because it's a long line it's going to be hanging down and snagging off a bit and so i'll probably throw the tail into there somewhere before i um assuming i'm gonna do this you see the top of the ground for it bends over once and then it comes to an abrupt end and bends again i wouldn't be surprised if the top hasn't already broke off in there somewhere and that will be flat and then it's going up again so we need to thin out that hole from there to here really the rest is okay uh oh i've gone over the wrong well and meant to go over the limb above the one it's gone over that's not a good spot because i'm hanging far out because it's a sloping branch but it has snagged on the dead stub that i mentioned earlier but i wanted to go over the top of that other one but it's so snagged and i've it's a little line to play with i'm not sure i can shake it loose so i might be committed i'm not i don't have to do it but looking at it i think at worst this branch that it rubs over is going to snap as my weight goes on to it that might actually help because it'll send me further into the tree if i make it over there and it hasn't snapped i'm sort of dangling a bit in mid-air but the stuff i can grab hold i'll be a bit of a scramble at the end so this is not ideal but i won't take a huge swing if the whole lot goes and i come back so you might see something interesting actually if it goes i don't know i'm not worried about it i'm not you know being foolish i just think that that limb that it's it's so jammed in there on the dead stub and another one because there's three hooks that i think i'm gonna be all right this uh do that branch doesn't snap i'll be amazed it's got to go wasn't it so if i keep one end sort of on here as well my help reduce the swing if i do take a tumble checker just a shame there's nothing live below is where the foot sender comes in handy you can just move along a little bit more stay on there i'll just go slowly if i do swing hopefully that branch will slow me up i've made sure there was no stubs on that part close stay strong so wherever happens now i think i'm safe because sort of got a good grip this limp this is why you need a hitch you can reach not one that's miles away okay so there is a bit of life on that stuff after all this one held up okay because i stayed quite high didn't drop down low and put lots of downward force on so first thing i have to do is get my lanyard wrapped around the tree and then well i'm safe totally safe look at all those congested limbs up there okay so what i wanted to do was go both fees down it got jammed in and i didn't have enough slack to flick it so it's out the end of the line anyway it's worth it so this is the top of the tree this is the second dogleg now has that blown out before or no i'm not so sure now like maybe it's just growing like this don't forget you're on a wide-angle lens so everything does look a bit squashed in but there's an enormous amount of weight um leaning in this direction so what i'll do is some thinning now smaller branches and then maybe a few bigger ones and uh just do that for you know perhaps another 15 feet below me i can probably thin it by about you know 20 25 on the ground fur is fine but it will make a difference because we're poking out above everything else here this tree is totally on its own there's the inlet there that's brentwood bay over that way salt spring island that's mount newton so i won't do i won't really film the thinning because there's not much to see well i'll show you one branch and then uh you don't feel cheated there you go i'll thin everything and throw it out that way because it's a kind of an archway down below me okay i'll get to it so i think that i think that's enough i'll just it's kind of probably 25 feet top 25 feet i've thinned out um it's like i say the tree is leaning that way so i concentrated mostly on that side anyway and there's no point in pruning the stuff below because it it adds no leverage really it's this top section that is the most vulnerable and um catches the wind and would initiate failure if it was to happen i would suggest that we look at this again in three years that's what i'll say to uh ray the owner and um and see how much regrowth has come back especially on this top part there won't be much below us the yellow foliage you can see that's to be expected at the end of a very dry season that we've had but as long as the tips are nice and green and there's nothing really to worry about so um i'll make my way down um i'm gonna have to tie in again so i won't make it down on this 200 foot line i'll have to tie in somewhere low down so i'll keep an eye on where the end of my rock is as it um comes my way okay i'll see you so so it's a problem when you get adventurous with the camera camera work is that um i've got to go back up this for a tree now and uh retrieve it it's only that's about 110 feet i think where i set it so well you know it's um i'll be up and down a few minutes so so okay i forgot to do this on site i'm just on my way home now so this is for lb powers who emailed me and also left a comment on the last video he was asking what the how to use the stick the measuring stick to estimate the height of a tree or how far it's going to fall so i'm going to use this here i'm going to hold the camera near to where my eye is so i don't know how well this is going to work how accurately you're going to see it but i'll explain it in principle so you need a stick and you need to hold your hand where are level with your eye okay so that's about my fist is level in my eye and if i angle the stick back to the point where it touches my eye keeping my arms straight like that i'm out this my hand at the same level as my eye okay so that's about the right distance now so when i angle the stick back it's touching my eye now just slightly past the camera the camera is at my eyes level so and then you stand it upright not tilted either way it's got to be dead um vertical and then you walk back with the stick keep going back until the tree itself fits in to the stake so you see can you see the top on the bottom fits in there this is this tree slightly drops down the hill so if we were going to put a falling coat right there level with where my hand is and um if it fits in from top to bottom there's no overlap and we felt the tree this way where we stood now is where it's going to land just take a little bit of practice and you can make a mistake if you're slightly crooked or on your on sloping ground or the tree is leaning back or forward but if it's straight up like that and your stick is straight up and it fits in then we're still just about exactly where it's going to land and bear in mind that trees do surge forward a little bit when they land so you have to factor that in as well as if you're cutting the tree high your hand at the bottom has to be where the you're going to make the undercoat i'm waggling it about as i'm talking but um and if you wanted to measure the tree height if you weren't falling if you just wanted an estimate of the tree height then you do the same thing you get it to fit into the stick and then you pace it out you know if you can accurately step one meter then um you know you just pace it out taking one meter strides all the way to the tree so i'm not saying it's really that simple but you do need something that's straight like a bamboo sometimes you can find straight sticks on site branches and what have you do i mean there's other ways of doing it as well but um that's what i was taught by a fella called uh dan thomas who um is in australia somewhere he showed me that in uh 92 dan fantastic climber he was i don't think he's still doing tree work but i think he's involved with trees so and they used to teach it at college i don't know if they still do but um they should do because it's really simple and it's very very accurate anyway i'm gonna get going you

Channel: Reg Coates

Views: 21,265

Keywords: Tree Work, Tree climbing, Climbing arborist

Id: SW2H2mbSrSI

Length: 32min 59sec (1979 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 05 2021