Goose Island Tree Work - My Charitable Project

OK. Sorry for the sideways pictures. I forgot to turn them before posting... Last Monday, a week ago today, Sherry and Kevin weathered an extreme storm on their island, Goose Island, in Lake Nipissing. The storm was brief and destructive, downing over 20 trees on their property alone. The storm's wrath continued wiping out power for much of the week in Callander, Powassan, North Bay and elsewhere. It caused at least two deaths.

I received a call from Sherry Monday night asking for assistance to take a large pine off their cottage and to clean up a number of other dangerous trees.

I agreed and took Wednesday off, packed the Hyundai with all of the necessary paraphenalia, then drove the 3.5 hours north. I met Kevin at Hunter's Bay marina and took the trip across the water in his boat.

Over the course of the day I first dropped a severely leaning pine that was threatening their dock and boat, later cutting it an pulling it from the water, then spent time on the roof trimming the massive pine that landed on its corner. Eventually I cut the 30 foot top of the tree hanging over the roof (the trunk was still 12" diameter at this point), the blocked a few sections of trunk down, then tied it off so the main trunk could be pulled away from the cottage as I cut the tree at it's 24" diameter base.

The biggest project of the day was felling "Chico" - the long-dead pine leaning severely over their cottage. This tree didn't budge in the storm, but just looking at it made you fear for you life. I had Kevin fashion a weight to throw from the roof into one of the branches. He eventually got it pretty high and I was able to tie off a sliding knot and run it up around the trunk so I had a solid rope about 2/3 the way up the tree. Next I tied the rope up to another tree and used a come-along to apply tension. I cut a large notch and a small backcut leaving a lot of holding wood. We applied more tension and more tension again but the tree wouldn't budge. Eventually I increased the backcut a few times and noticed that our tension was enough to start pulling the tree in the right direction. A few more slices of the holding wood and the massive beast finally gave way, falling exactly where we wanted. This was a triumphant moment.

For the rest of Wednesday I cleared a number of other uprooted trees off the paths throughout the island.

When Vanessa and I returned on Saturday in The Toad I continued my work, cutting a large number of the trees into firewood and piling the brush.

The last picture is from Saturday night. After the cutting we decided to have a few drinks and roast marshmallows over the fire. Unfortunately the marshmallows had mostly fused together in their bag so I took pleasure in roasting the entire lump at once. The people in the picture from left to right are Vanessa, Sherry, Desmond (Kevin's friend from Toronto) and me with the marshmallow...