labingi

This morning I met Dave and Ray at Friedman's.  We bought lumber, screws, and rebar so I can build a bridge.  We hauled the stuff up to the house, cut the lumber into 5' pieces and then hauled it out to Duck Lake. The three of us then switched gears and cleared the fallen tree off the old road above Duck Lake. Lots of twiggy stuff, but unnerving because three trees were involved.  The biggest tree had fallen hitting and breaking two smaller trees.  All of the bases were hung up (read the trees had snapped partway up and had not fallen all the way down. Instead the heavy trunk of the tree was suspended in the air.  When the lower branches are cut back it changes the way the trunk is supported and can cause one or more of the trunks to roll and fall.  This was on a steep sideslope, so I kept a sharp eye on everything as I cut, I really didn't want anything rolling down on top of me. 
Our third task was to clear two massive limbs at Deer Camp. The two were hung up, and leaning on each other.  There was probably 1,000 # waiting to fall on us.  Fortunately those two limbs were pretty stable and on flatter ground.  Once we cleared all the twiggy "brush"  and cut back any branch that was not supporting weight we considered the problem. Geez, hundreds of pounds 10 feet in the air....  We put a tow strap on the smaller limb and pulled it sideways a little. It obligingly fell down with a thump, leaving the larger limb hanging by nothing much.  I tried a cut to see if it would roll down, but no luck. So we put the tow strap on it and pulled it the opposite direction of the first limb. It fell with almost no real pressure on the strap.  Whew!  Very scary work.  Lots of thought about how to keep fragile human bodies safe.  With the limbs down Dave and Ray left as they had late afternoon appointments. 
I returned to the house and feverishly sorted out ribbons.  We mark the trail by tying surveyors tape; bright orange or bright pink; to clothespins.  The clothespins can then be clipped to branches, fences, wands or pretty much anything else.  To keep the ribbons and clothespins tidy and easy to access the pins are clipped to a circle of rope that can be worn over one shoulder.  Here is Carrie and Juno last year. 


The flags with the blue in them are to mark turns or other places where the trail might be confusing.  They mean: STOP, find your next flag before you go any further.  It will be in sight!  Helps keep people from getting lost.  I am desperately trying to make more flags.  Somehow an entire, large box of flags, neatly clipped to ropes, has disappeared. Probably at least 200 flags just gone.  Hopefully now that I am replacing them the old flags will re-appear. 
Tomorrow is a bridge building day with Glenn.