swamp logging

[snowstorm]

i dont think i like it. it would seem that as cold as its been it would freeze just a little. nope. i tried it last week. cut a 6" fir left it in the head pushed the feed button. tree went 2' into the ground. made a nice brush matt hopping it would hold. it did for a while. sent another tree into the muck this one went in over 6'.maybe that wood should stay there

[thecfarm]

The bog that I cross over is like that too. I can be walking along on top of snow and one foot will go into a watery grave. Than as I try to get out the other foot might go in too. I only have a tractor so I keep my tires out of the bog. 150 feet of cable and another 50 for an extension works good.

[1270d]

Isn't it thick enough timber to make a good mat?  Just make sure you put every limb, top and scrap of bark in your trail.  Deepest bog I've cut to date is 34 ft.  Lots of em over 10.  I really enjoy the challenge.  Some areas the harvester and forwarder are side by side on different strips, you can see waves in the ground and the machine movements cause the other to kinda sway and roll a bit.

Here is an example of how snowstorm was checking depth

http://youtu.be/zddsdnXEDmc

[thenorthman]

its official I need a feller buncher... just so I can do that!

[Maine logger88]

Wow cool video kinda scetchy though running a heavy piece of equipment on a wet hole like that. I know what you mean about nothing freezing though, where I'm cutting I've been having a heck of a time trying to get my roads froze in you would think stuff would freeze better with all the cold weather the lot I'm cutting goes right up to a bog that is very deep a few guys around have had trouble with it in the past and got stuff stuck pretty bad, my father cut a lot near the one I'm on in the early 90s and he got a s7 stuck real bad working the edge of the bog so I'm a little leary while twitching but the job has to be done this winter cause the landowner plans to sell this summer o well just be careful I guess

[lumberjack48]

This is the kind of swamp we logged in every year. When it doesn't want to freeze, i pushed  sticks all over in it where the road was going to go. Then it has to be broke up everyday  to let the heat out, i've made road across miles of swamp like this. This is a real good winter so far, we need another 6 weeks of cold weather to have a good year. I liked -30 to -20 , everything went good, anything above 0 is no good for a swamp logger.

We'd also would take a little cat and cress cross the job to get it froze up for the skidders if it was a bad bog.

[1270d]

LJ. There is a logger here who used similar methods to freeze swamp road.  Start with a snowmobile, then little dozer with 3 ft wide tracks, then a big dozer.   I've heard of pushing sticks in like you say, to get the frost down deeper.

[Black_Bear]

i dont think i like it. maybe that wood should stay there

A decision will probably be made during the week of Feb. 10th, as to whether some crews will stay in their current swampy harvest blocks, or move early to spring lots. I'd like to cut until mid to late February, but there is not enough snow right now to efficiently move wood out of some of the swamps, and I'm not against waiting for a winter with a relatively deep snow pack.

The feller either sinks out of sight, or he is able to punch in trails only to have the grapples struggle to freeze down the trails. There isn't enough brush in the world for some of the holes, and waiting for the black muck to freeze, even with the cold temps., without making a mess, can be slow and sometimes unproductive. The Tigercat 6-wheel grapples, with rear lags, work well in these conditions, but a typical 4-wheel grapple can struggle. Oh well, they get to work in the hardwood uplands - good cutting and the main trails are bulletproof luge runs.     

[treechopper40]

thers a lot of tricks to freezing a good trail the most important ingredient is below zero weather get the snow off it the snow works as an insulation and if theres any standing water try to ditch it off the trail then drive through it and break it open if im trying to freeze a trail I will get my last hitch of the day out of that trail so it broke open to freeze at nite use your blade on the way in to fix the trail just keep messing with it a little every day and soon you will have a nice trail I spent a few nites in the woods on a skidder at 30-40 below zero freezing mud holes 

[Ken]

We also have some areas like that on our job.  Wish I had a 6 or 8 wheeled forwarder by times.  We have had to carry loads of brush to put in the holes on the main trail to keep it passable.  One day last week the forwarder was cleaning up a section and got very stuck.  Skidder would not move it.  Had to walk the harvester back over a mile to pull him out. 

[OntarioAl]

Folks
Where I live swamp logging is a fact of life, on a large operation it is not unusual to have swamp roads several miles in length.
I would start cutting swamp road in early December like lumberjack48 states you "have to get the heat out" working my way to the back of the logging area. I would use a variety of methods to tramp the swamp to get enough frost to hold the tractor so we could start actual road construction. You would be surprised as to how fast and deep frost penetrates once we started driving pickups on it.
The actual logging would start after the Christmas/New Years break and we would start at the very back of the cut working our way out of the swamp.
Cutting the timber and getting it to roadside was another kettle of fish hand the best were CTL machines creating a brush pack by  processing in front of the machine and walking on the brush pack ( like one continuous snowshoe) and the forwarders would run on the brush pack. Hand falling and cable skidders were the next best Feller Bunchers could negotiate very soft ground as long as the traveled in straight lines as much as possible trying not to break through the root mass . If the snow was deep and the ground soft the poor grapple skidders have one heck of a time. Operator experience in that the knowledge of how far you could push it before you got really mired came at the expense of getting stuck (numerous times) is a major factor in logging swamps.
They not teach the tricks of the trade of swamp logging when I took my degree in Forestry I learned the hard way by  being stuck myself or assisting in the extraction of equipment buried in the bog.
Al

[thecfarm]

1270d,not a good place to broke through!! There is an open place in my bog,I have not been out to it for more than 15 years. It's very thick,as in your video,then it opens up to about 20 feet around, nothing grows in that area. That is kinda erie.

[Autocar]

Never seen a stick of wood push that easy into the ground, cool but scary for a heavy machine. Here in our area the woods isn't froze a bit and some feilds are sketchy under the snow. Thanks for scharing very interesting.

[barbender]

That's a fun trick to do when someone is riding along in the machine, folks get a little unsettled when the stick of wood goes down 15' Actually, it's quite amazing what the 6 and 8 wheel harvesting equipment will work on. Usually, if the 6 wheel harvester can cut it, I can pick it up and haul it with the 8 wheel forwarder, in areas where a 4 wheel skidder would fall right through. If we didn't swamp log we'd lose access to about 60% of our wood, 100% of some species like black spruce.

[snowstorm]

i tried it again. if it was ever going to freeze it would have by now. most of it was ok. i did find a few places where i could feed a tree down. one spot it went 14ft. after 5 or 6 trips with the fowarder it would start to get a little soft.

[snowstorm]

today was the last day in the swamp. i did find a soft spot. so i cut a fir set the head on the ground and pushed the feed button   it went down......20'2" : :

[SwampDonkey]

I've been around cedar swamps and that ground never freezes other than the new trail you swamp out the day before and left over night in extreme cold. But there is also nicer cedar ground that has no deep mud, you have hard limestone or even gravel under the root mat. That is what my cedar ground is like except for one narrow run, that is almost like a stream bed, but isn't. It's just deep muck. One good thing is that cedar and balm will grow on it at least, and not just alder and willow brush.