Heli-logging on Vancouver Island.

Heli-logging, an expensive way of timber removal from areas where road building would be even more expensive. The helicopter we've seen in use the most frequently is an Air-Crane Sikorsky S-64 as seen in the picture, here it's at the refueling/staging area alongside a mainline logging road in the southern part of Vancouver Island. In the mid 1980's a massive Russian helicopter (and Russian support team) was used in the Gordon River area for a few years. Well worth checking out the videos at the link I provided to see just how versatile this machine is. Timber harvesting, fire suppression, and a variety of heavy lift operations can be viewed. As for the trees, nowhere's safe anymore!

Hoe Chuckers, the modern way to decimate the forest.

Three views of  hoe chuckers on Vancouver Island, some scale is apparent as I drove by the parked one. Very expensive machinery that processes timber to size and species for the mills requirements via computer software updated each day. The lower photograph shows one stacking timber into a coldpile at the roadside for removal by logging trucks, should the logs need moving more than three times to get to the road, then it becomes cheaper to build a new road.  Smaller trees can be handled right from the harvesting stage as can be seen in this video of one at work. Pretty amazing equipment, just too bad it puts so many of people out of work.

Railroad logging on Vancouver Island

The old Shay locie at Lake Cowichan, part of the Kaatza Station Museum outdoor exhibit at Saywell Park. We passed by here a couple of weekends ago and I took this rather indifferent shot. Better views of this and more Vancouver Island logging locomotives can be viewed at 'Preserved! Steam Locomotives of British Columbia' . The last steam loco in use on the island was an Alco, last working out of Woss until 1976. This video shows her running after restorations in 1988.

Woss has the last logging railroad system on the island but nowadays the equipment used looks like this video of a spectacular trestle and a load of empties. 'From Camp to Community' is a great site for getting a view of the old days in the logging industry, check out the pages on The Camps, The Loggers etc too, along with 'loggers lingo' and 'now you're logging'

Look out there's a monster coming!

Big load of lumber on this truck heading out to the log sort at Port McNeill. Notice how tiny the full size pick up appears.

A supercharged Pacific logging truck (check out part 2 of this video too). 550hp and functional brakeset as well as a retarder and a jake brake to control everything.
14ft wide and still turns on a dime (NOT!)
5 minutes of dust cloud, maybe longer, try timing it yourself ;)

Just massive, keep out of the way and travel with care at all times.