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C10 Terrace Review — Wednesday, May 8, 1991

Some

things change...

by Michael Kelly

erry Anderson’s day starts Pp at 5:30 in the morning. He's on the site in the Skeena West forest for his first load of logs at 6. On a good day, “without delays, he can haul five loads. Headed out Highway 16 cast- ward, the tri-axle trailer firmly planted on the back of the carriage, Anderson pulls out and smoothly

_ passes two slow-moving cals. A

total of 15-20 minutes in delays over the period of a day can cost him that fifth load. "It pays for the fuel," he explains, 450 litres of ita day.

He calls in to the site by radio at St. Croix Creek, and tums left onto the gravel road leading up to a single-lane concrete bridge: span- ning the Skeena. At the end of the bridge he tums left onto a dirt logging road, following a direc- tional arrow that reads "Shannon Main”.

As the hard-sprung truck bucks and charges up the mountain, Anderson remarks that this road’s a paved highway compared to some he’s hauled on, particularly those in the Nass Valley. Fourteen kilometres up, he swings into a pull-off, turns the rig around in an astonishingly small area, and backs up to a landing.

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He has arrived at a setling high up the valley being worked by Don Hull and Sons, logging for the licence holder, Skeena Cellulose. Bucked and sorted logs are piled next to the landing, and a hydrau-

lic log loader is working a few

metres away from the machine that makes this setting different, from neatly every other logging show in B.C, — askyline. .

Outside Anderson’s truck the air has a clear and invigorating, high-

altitude fee) to it and is full of the-

rumble of engines and the menac- ing metallic ring of steel cable under stress. The loader operator drops the machine’s pincers over the logging truck’s trailer, picks it up and gently drops it on the -ground behind the truck. Anderson backs up, and with the delicacy of a surgeon the loader picks up the trailer attachment beam and settles it on to the truck’s hitch.

Behind the loader a clutch of logs swings up end-first over the embankment with startling sudden- ness and drops lightly on the far end of the landing. Watching the operation, Gordon Hull explains what a skyline is and why it is different from other methods of getting logs out of the bush.

Grapple yarding and tower log- ging, the two prevalent methods, drag the felled trees out of the forest along the ground. Grapple yarders have a comparatively short reach and require large networks of roads to get at the timber. ‘Towers have a greater range, but they still haul the logs through the bush, damaging the ground to some extent and sometimes break-

ing the logs up as they catch on

obstructions.

The skyline lifts the logs clear of the bush and carries them through the air, avoiding damage to both the soil and the timber being yard- ed. With a reach of half a mile, a skyline operation requires far less road building than conventional yarding systems. ~

In the valley below the landing limber has been stripped off both

sides below a line partway up the |

mountain. A stream sparkles

through a narrow band of trees left

on cither side to protect it. Against |

Logging is still a tough business

on the skyline cable like a small gondola. The load of logs is attached to a cable descending from the skycar, which can raise and lower the load as it is pulled horizontally across the valley on the main cable.

Running the operation requires close coordination between two people: the operator who sits in a cab at the base of the tower, who controls the movement of the skycar up the main skyline cable, and another man who stands on the landing, controlling the upward and downward movement of the load through a remote-control device tied to his belt and iuned in to the skycar’s engine.

Ata signal from the men across the valley, the skyline operator blows a short, deafening blast on his hom, the engine roars and the cable begins to wind around the drum at an alarming speed. On the landing the other operator plays his remote contro! module lightly, and across the valley the logs swing into the air. In less than a minute they rise over the edge of the

environmental impact to worry.

about."

Pointing to the operation across the valley, Hull explains that @ conventional yarding system would have required another five or six kitometres of road and another — bridge to get within operating distance of the stand being hauled out by the skyline. To that expense — would be added extra trucking charges on evety load.

The operation is being slowed somewhat by snow still standing on the slope. Hull figures they’re getting about 8,000 pounds a "turn", The skyline’s capacity is 30,000 pounds, but he says he likes to keep it at around 15,000 pounds, a compromise between productivity and wear and tear on ihe machinery. His contract is set at 28 truck loads of logs per day out of this site.

"They don’t want 30 and they don’t want 26," he explains. The mill has a tight inventory control system. The wood volume he would like see going out of this site per day is about 240 cubic metres.

n Hardscrabble Main in QO an adjacent valley a crew

is setting up a convefi-

landing and are set down.

the snow on the far side are four | men, barely visible, tiny figures

1,400 feet away: Through the intervening air runs the taut cable

arrangement on which the timber |

is carried across.

Hull explains that the skyline consists of two separate machines that work in concert. The skyline itself is strung from the top of a 100-foot tower across the valley and anchored on the other side with several heavy cables cinched down to trees and stumps. The tower is held in place with a siml- lar arrangement, The line is ten- sioned by rotating drums that look like giant fishing reels, run by an operator who also controls, through another cable, the movement of the foad up and down the main cable.

The second component in the arrangement is the skycaf, a

machine that rides back and forth |

Perry Anderson: No time for fishing.

It’s a fast, high-volume opera- tion, and it has to be — Hull’s investment in the equipment is well in excess of $1 million. Des- pite the daunting capital invest- ment, Hull thinks the system is not only superior to conventional sys- ems in terms of environmental impact but also an economically viable way to log. "The mill pays 15 percent more, but there are savings... they have to build and maintain fewer roads. There are fewer bridges to build, and less

tional tower operation. Across the valley four fallers, looking imposs- ibly small in the distance, are dropping trees with the muffled snarl of chain saws and an occa- sional crack as another one goes

down. Hull says the fallers work about a month in advance of the skyline moving in. |

Falling is one profession made more difficult by the skyline — the loggers have further to walk because there are fewer roads, The crew working at Hardscrabble had