Cablecrane course Glengarry Forest

Date Added: 24 January 2013 Contributor: Norman Davidson Year of Photo: 1977 Picture No: 1462

The photograph is courtesy of the family of George Dey. George took many forestry photographs in his forestry career and many are now shown on this web site. Check under ‘Groups’ and George Dey Collection.

A great photograph showing the forest on the west side of the glen which has been well racked and thinned. The section above the middle road has particularly well laid out racks running fairly parallel to each other. This was a difficult task usually achieved but pegging out lines with the help of a compass on a set bearing – not as easy as it sounds:
1. On steep slopes the early compasses were limited as they had to be kept flat and sighting had to be done through a raised arm with a wire sight which was very difficult in dark conditions.
2. The line passed through thick impenetrable Sika spruce with branches to the ground.
3. The line invariably from time to time passed through the centre of trees and it was very difficult to continue the line onwards.

The usual method was to start pinning out a straight line with a set of bright coloured ranging rods or canes with coloured flags on a set bearing from the road side. The aim was to continue as long as possible by this method brashing the trees with an axe along the line as you went for visibility and access. If the line ran into a tree you could sometimes bypass it by setting up a new line a foot or so off to the side of your last few marking pegs and then getting new pegs back on line beyond the tree. Sometimes there was no option but to use the compass bearing again but it was difficult to be absolutely sure that it was accurate in the darkness, on the slopes and from the very short distances that you could see.

Once you reached the top of the plantation with the line, a suitable Spar tree in the middle of the line had to be selected on which the skyline and haul back cables would be rigged. This was well marked with paint as were the spar tree anchor trees behind. All the trees within the rack way (about 5 feet either side of the centre line) were then blazed with an axe to signify removal by the fellers but on the way suitable sets of trees for the skyline cable support blades were also identified and marked with paint. Once several racks were marked the areas in between them would also be walked over and the trees to be thinned also blazes with an axe.

A bent rack was not appreciated by the winch team! A one degree deviation over 300 metres resulted in the rackway being 5 metres off to one side at the extreme end. It was possible to get around slight bends by pulling over the skyline cable support arms with additional ropes but more often another line of trees had to be felled off the side of the rack or more likely the portion beyond the bend was not extracted.

It would be great to get more stories of lining up and marking rack ways.

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Groups: Forestry Areas, George Dey Forestry Collection, Timber harvesters, processors, forwarders and cable cranes

3 Comments

Marking racks was indeed a tricky one. Especially when stacking spaces at the roadside were limited or you had to negotiate cliffs, cottage sized boulders and a lack of spar trees. If you had a very accurate compass the job was much easier. Tony Cunningham, who was a forester at Benmore, was a Major in the Commandos during the war and still had his W^D compass. He actually trusted me with it. Using this, you could mark one rack up the hill and another on the way down, having measured the distance to the next stacking space before you left the road. If you came to a tree in the middle of the rack, you could just lean on it and use your very accurate compass to continue on the same bearing. As long as the bearing was the same, a few inches to one side or the other made no difference to the straightness of the rack. Similarly, if you came to a cliff or another large obstacle, you could sight on to something on the other side of it, walk round to that and continue on your way to the spar tree. This tree did not have to be in the centre of the rack as you could use angled tiebacks to lean the solid snatch block and pulleys out towards the centre. You could then walk over to the next spar tree remembering the distance to the stacking space on the road. Add or subtract 180° and off you went back to the road. While sometimes you got it badly wrong, you could usually end up within a couple of metres of your mark on the road. That was good enough over 300 metres, as long as the rack was dead straight. Comment left on 26 January 2013 at 21:02 by Andy MacNicol

Andy - Great to read about your racking exploits. I wish I had had the compass that you used! As we worked in some very steep racks (Glen Nevis) our compasses were useless for sighting downhill as the lowest elevation was often still half way up the tree, down hill of us. Did you ever use the device which I saw once - a set of poles with a cross bar on which were fixed three different coloured lights? I forget the sequence but something like red on extreme left, blue extreme right and green in the middle. You started lining up your rack on the green lights and when you hit a tree you carried on forward using either the blue or red light which were on the cross bar about a foot right or left.

If I remember correctly in thick brash it was hard to see the lights more than 20 yards! Comment left on 27 January 2013 at 21:00 by

I saw these poles with the lights. Watched them being used and was not impressed. If you did not stick them in the ground with the crossbar at an exact right angle to the rack direction, your line was out. Never used them.
Sighting down a steep hill was indeed tricky but constantly taking a sight back up the hill as a check usually kept you right. Comment left on 27 January 2013 at 22:15 by Andy MacNicol

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