Organised thinning used Rope loop - Glentress
Photograph courtesy of Mike Aldridge, Inverness, who worked as a Training Forester for a number of years.
View of a thinning site in Glentress Forest where the small trees have been felled and managed is such a way as to raise them to a comfortable working height for chainsaw snedding.
Mike comments:
‘This was a method devised to take the benefits of bench felling into first thinnings, small trees light enough to be manhandled. Setup involved marking extraction racks, setting a rope loop on retained trees each side of the rack, felling and snedding the first tree and hanging it in the rope loops at hip height. Work progressed by felling rack trees over the bench, adding more bench trees as required to maintain optimum working height. Bench trees could also be hung along each side of the rack to benefit felling between racks, once redundant bench trees removed from the loops and converted. The method could be adapted for wholepole or shortwood extraction and even used on steep ground for cablecrane extraction.’
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Groups: Forestry Areas, Forestry in Action