Tree felling good times.
This week we decided to cut down a tree. Granted, not a monstrous tree. A corkscrew willow, to be exact. Also, not a small tree. It's all relative. It was about forty feet high and the thickest diameter at the base about twenty inches. Solid. The trouble was the thing grew like a weed, wasn't very attractive, and was infested with cottonwood beetles. Every year for the past several, the beetle infestation that would rain down on our yard and driveway has become worse. The tree is dying. It was time.
After a day's work, we have light and no more beetle infestation. Oh, and a few piles of debris.
Backing up a bit, last fall we had a few landscaping companies come out to bid the job. This tree had gotten unwieldy for the reasons I mentioned. This is what it looked like in a photo I took at the inspection right before we bought our house. Yep, a dark hole in the corner of the yard.
Still, where there's a will there's a way. Also, YouTube. After watching a handful of videos filled with dudes showing how to properly fell a tree, we figured it wasn't rocket science. At the same time, dealing with a forty-foot tree is not to be taken too lightly. The amount of mass and energy that thing would create when falling was meant to be respected. So we followed the advice of the YouTubers and got to work.
Step 1: Remove as much of the undergrowth as possible before cutting down the tree
We did this the night before and got it looking like a proper Dr. Suess tree (this photo fast-forwards to when we were ready to cut it down and K had our haul rope in hand).
The linked video explains it better than I can. It is a handy trick.
Step 3: Attach a rope (we should have used a static line, but all of our climbing ropes are dynamic) at least 3/5 of the way up the tree… the higher the better
For this, we used a rock attached to a 3mm accessory cord (also from our climbing bin). K chucked that high up into the tree. Successful, we took our 11mm+ old climbing rope and tied that to the cord, then pulled the cord until the rope was looped around a solid branch about three-fourths of the height with both ends on the ground. We cheated and clipped a carabiner through a figure-eight knot on one end of the climbing rope before pulling the long end until the biner caught on the branch, securing the rope with a tight loop around the branch.
Step 4: Make a face cut in the tree in the direction of the fall
We have a long driveway with plenty of runout which was one reason we were able to fell this beast without climbing it and sawing off pieces from the top down. While K positioned herself at the end of the driveway, I made the face cut with our now-beloved 16" Homelite.
Step 5: Make the felling ("back") cut
I admittedly didn't think through the face cut enough so it was too low. This meant my felling cut wouldn't line up with the bottom of my face cut. Spoiler: it all turned out okay nonetheless. Next time, I'd be more diligent with that face cut. Most of the way through the felling cut but before the tree hinged and fell, I stopped to check in with K. She heaved on our pull rope and got ready to guide however many tons of tree down to our driveway. Then I finished the cut.
The tree creaked and groaned for a second or two before crashing down on our driveway (see the second video at the bottom of this post). While we had been doing this, a couple walking on the canal trail across the street stopped to watch the action. Successful with our first-time endeavor to fell a forty-foot tree, they hooted and hollered before uttering (which we were able to overhear in the deafening silence after the tree fell), "She saved it." That made K smile.
Step 6: Clean up and grind the stump
That left us with a bunch of cleanup. A bunch is maybe an understatement. Again, it's all relative.
I kept working the Homelite while K managed the smaller stuff.
After picking up the kids, they joined in the fun. After several more hours of cutting and piling the debris, we celebrated a solid day's work with a run to Blue Spoon for froyo.
Granted, we still need to finish the job. There's about five feet left of the trunk that the ol' Homelite can't muster the length to cut. It's too wide. Then we have to grind the stump. Our attempt to rent a chipper from Home Depot failed since it couldn't tackle the willow debris. It just clogged up when it even was able to shred anything. We took it back. For the grinder, we'll look elsewhere in town for a place to rent.
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In the end, we're certainly glad we tackled this job ourselves. It's what we do. See a need, fill a need. It took thought and planning, but in the end it took less than five minutes to bring the thing down. Maybe surprisingly, I didn't overthink it. If I had, I may have been too intimidated to tackle it. That said, it's probably worth restating that felling a tree of this size could have ended really, really badly. For one or both of us or for our house. It's a job not be undertaken too brazenly. As lots of things in life, what helped us was calling on an intentional balance of braziness and brains.
We'll plant a maple of some sort in its place. K wants something that turns red in the fall to contrast with the yellow the nearby larch will turn. Something that won't drop crap all over our yard, driveway and vehicles. Something that won't grow like a weed. Something that (hopefully) won't get infested with bugs. Oh, and something that won't root as much as this thing that was growing mere feet from our twelve-foot-tall retaining wall.
All in a day's work. For fun, here is a timelapse showing how it went down.
