Clear Fell Cardrona Forest
The photographs are courtesy of Stuart Mitchell, Peebles, who formerly worked at Glentress Forest.
A great view of a manual felled site at Yellow Mire, Cardrona Forest. The neat rows of timber with the brash branches and tops all in the zone between the timber rows indicate that this was carried out by fellers who had been trained in organised felling methods.
In among the brash zones can be seen trees at regular intervals lying diagonally downhill. These would have been the ‘bench trees’ felled and partially sned onto which the other trees were felled. The bench trees kept those trees up off the ground at a convenient working height for chainsaw snedding with less back bending and also easy access to the undersides to cut off the branches.
The other main purpose of the bench was to enable easy handling of the fully sned trees by rolling them by hand along the bench and into the timber zone. With all the timber tops lying close together in a narrow zone it was a much quicker operation also for the skidder operator to rope together a load by the tips and pull out to the conversion site.
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Groups: Forestry Areas