Wednesday, April 25, 2012

Nearby Logging...

54 degrees - 2:21 pm - overcast with on and off light showers...

Living in the mountains, there is bound to be some logging near us.  Along the gravel logging road that leads home there is a lot of land that is owned by a very large timber company and they are getting ready to log.

Saturday on my way into town I ran into this...

'TIMBER FALLING AHEAD' --- 'ROAD CLOSED'

This barricade was blocking my only way on or off the mountain so I snuck under it and got to see a feller buncher in action (which is pretty impressive by the way).  The feller buncher had been busy since early morning so it was already safely away from the road when I went by.

stopped to take a picture of the feller buncher on my way home
 the guy was already done for the day

If you don’t know what a feller buncher is or what it does – it is a type of harvester used in logging.  It is a motorized vehicle with an attachment that can rapidly cut and gather several trees before felling them.  The attachment is a tree-grabbing device furnished with a chain-saw, circular saw or a shear that grabs trees and cuts them off at the base.  The machine then places the cut trees in a stack to later be transported out.

The feller buncher is usually the first big piece of equipment sent in before the logging even starts.  Its job is to clear the timber off of the right-a-way so the timber company can come in and build the logging road.

the beginnings of a new logging road

Things are sure going to start looking a lot different on the drive home once they start logging.