I had started cutting trails into the 40 acres north of the creek at the beginning of the month. This has been on my list for a long time but it’s a low priority project so I seem to only work on it in spurts.
After getting out of the creek bottom and up to the plateau at the beginning of the month, the next step was to walk it and blaze it with surveyor tape. Did that a couple weeks ago.
Two things were of interest to me. First, there was an old two track road that traverses about half the distance before exiting the north border. Not too uncommon to find those in the woods around here. Probably an old farm road or logging road. Regardless, as is usual with those, it was packed hard enough there still isn’t much growing on it so of course I’m following that where I can.
The other thing was I found an old trail of pink and yellow surveyor tape almost everywhere I was picking for my new green surveyor tape blazes. It was nowhere close to following a property line or utility line and had been there long enough it was pretty routine to see the tree bark engulfing it. I recalled my father had, many years ago shortly after he got his first four wheeler, said something about putting trails through this area. At the time, we were neighbors and we spoke regularly, but I wasn’t welcome in these sort of projects so Dad and his hunting buddy did I didn’t know what other than never finish. Apparently, Dad marked out the path but for whatever reason never cleared it. I pulled down his old tape since it was digging into the trees, some seemed to have gone missing, and it wasn’t 100% on point with current conditions.
Anyway, because of the old road some of this is stupid easy. Pretty much knock a couple things out of the way as you drive down the literal road. If you look close you might can see the faint indentations of the wheel tracks but it’s hard to see in a photo. I tried about a half dozen angles in a couple places and never could get a picture I was satisfied with showing evidence of the old road. It’s faint, but quite clear in person.
Other areas need some real work. One thing I really appreciate about the grapple; if you can’t get a good angle on something, a bad angle is often sufficient. That was the case with this chunk of long dead pine.
Winch is very handy for safely dismantling pileups like this one.
About 30 minutes after arriving at this mess, the road reappeared.
Only got about 3 hours in today. Need 3 or 4 more sessions like this to get it roughed in. After that, I’ll need to come back with the bucket to fill any stump holes (already have two on the list) and do a final cleanup limb pruning.
High’s here are in the 90’s so afternoon work in chaps and helmet aren’t happening. It ain’t that imperative. But starting about 7:00 it’s not bad for a few hours in the morning.
