Seven trees fewer

After the Thanksgiving wind storm, we’ve been waiting a little nervously for a couple weeks while that huge tree loomed over our house. Today it was cut down, along with six other trees in the yard that were “compromised” and likely to fall on the house in any future storms.

How do you (safely) cut down hundred-foot-tall trees? Well, it’s a pretty cool process to watch. Travis, the arborist, used a bucket truck to slowly ascend this beast, limbing as he went up.

The bucket truck couldn’t quite reach to the very top of the tree– here it is at full extension. But I guess it was enough, because Travis whacked off the top of the tree.

After that, it was a matter of bucking the tree all the way down. He’d cut a foot-long length of trunk and toss it to the ground, where it would make a satisfying thunk.

With maybe forty feet left, he dropped down to the base and toppled the remaining trunk into our driveway. I was a little disappointed he didn’t yell “Timber!

The limbs and leaves went into an industrial chipper (the yellow machine above), and the logs– which are apparently called rounds in lumber lingo– went into a truck. Per our request, they’ll be donated to organizations around the valley who provide firewood for needy families this winter.

Trees near the house weren’t quite so easy; they had to be climbed. Travis put on some boots with massive steel spikes, a safety harness, and up he went. Again, he’d shave off limbs along the way.

It may not look all that impressive, but he’s probably eighty feet above the ground, and acts like it’s nothing. He wields his chainsaw with one hand, using the other to hang onto the branches and toss them to the ground so they don’t land on the roof.

It was sad to see a couple of the trees in a little grove in our backyard come down. They looked perfectly fine, but in his expert opinion, they were compromised and most likely wouldn’t survive another storm.

Here’s a good shot of Travis as he finishes limbing and starts working on taking down the crown of the tree.

I did some quick math. It took him around half an hour to remove one tree, and the bill for that will be a thousand dollars. That’s $2,000 an hour. Clearly I picked the wrong vocation! Even lawyers don’t charge that much. Then again, lawyers don’t come crashing through your roof during a storm…

Anyway, all’s said and done, and our yard is looking a little more bare. It’s a good thing we still have a gazillion (minus seven) trees in the forest all around us!