So, the kid and I finished up a funky job for the assistant chief of my firehouse yesterday. His family home has a deep back yard with a Koi/Bass pond in the rear down a hill, and he needed to dredge it. That required pulling out the 4+ trees and limbs that had fallen in, so taught him the running bowline to tie around each offending limb/stem, and then he came back in his single man skiff, and I attached to Dingo and pulled away. Got those out, plus a lot of other fallen trees/limbs around the pond on day one earlier in the week. Day 2 (yesterday) dealt with about 8 dead stems on the path down to the pond, 5 of which we felled and took up to the chipper, the other 3 were so rotted/covered in vines, we just felled them into the woods. That left the fun part for last, 2 cherry trees, one about 50' and looking dead at the top, which had fallen into one about 90' tall that split about 35' up and where the smaller was nestled into. The bigger one was partially uprooted and leaning over the path into a 60' fir and a 80' white pine, with multiple leads holding it up. Spiked up the bigger cherry first to release the smaller tree, and was surprised to find it was completely dead and detached from it's stump as I cut to release. One of the leads went away from the fir/pine, so that was cut first. The remaining 2 were still 40+ ft above me, all entangled in the fir/pine, so I got a tag line up, threw a throwing knot about 12' up and was able to catch a stub and secure the rope there. My son tied off the other end to the Dingo about 50 ft' away, and I started an undercut on the stem to prepare for him to pull away as I finished it (and bail out down the rope god forbid it came back toward me). Well, maybe 3" in on the undercut, the loudest crack of wood we ever heard came from somewhere near me, scaring the crap out of me and the kid. I got the hell down ASAP, thought about it, and decided to fell the tree almost normally, with the kid pulling on the Dingo to release the leads. Notched it towards the downhill, did kerf cuts on the side to help avoid barberchair scenario, and completed back cut to about 1" of my desired hinge. Signaled for my son to start pulling, and as he did, the whole thing came crashing down, with the leads doing that midstem collapse backwards similar to the scenario that Scott/John brought up a few months ago. It scared the crap out of both of us, but was still satisfying to watch. It took some time to get the pathway clear, but we were able to get all the limbs/wood out of there and finish up late with sandwiches from the local pizza joint at about 8:30.
