7/30-8/1/96 I went up to the property for 3 days: Tuesday through Thursday.

On the way up, I stopped at the Two Rivers office and paid for a pickup load of sand and gravel. While I was there, Roy Dickinson gave me a lot of good tips on how to deal with logs and cables. I am thirsty for that kind of information right now because I am still working on a plan for how to get the logs up to the building site.

As soon as I got to the trailer, I called the building department and scheduled a foundation inspection for the next day.

I brought 3 sacks of cement with me but instead of driving the pickup up, I wheeled the cement up to the site in the wheelbarrow. I was going to have to take the pickup up there later with the sand and gravel and I didn't want to go through it twice in a day. I moved the mixer out of the road and then went down to the Two Rivers gravel pit and hand loaded a pickup load of sand and pea gravel. I had gotten the pickup parked up at the gravel bin and was just starting to make some repairs to the bin when Dave showed up. He had planned to come over for a visit after a business meeting at Stevens Pass.

Dave helped me nail ID tags on most of the logs and then we measured the ones we could reach for length. This goes much faster with two people. When we were done, we measured the diameters of the far ends of the logs. This is also easier with two people because one guy can see the ID number on one end and the other guy can measure the other end. After that, we picked a few blackberries, whacked a few ferns, watched a lizard, observed an ant lion, ate dinner, and chatted. He left for home about 9:00 PM.

On Wednesday morning, I finished making the repairs on the gravel bin, and then shoveled the sand and gravel from the pickup into the bin.

After a lot of thinking about it, I decided to erect a crane, similar to the one I used for the A-frames of the snow shelter, to use to pull the logs up to the site. The boom will be the same log I used before, but I need another 30 foot pole to stand vertically above the butt of the boom. I went into the woods looking for a suitable pole and I found a nice straight Douglas Fir that had been blown over the previous winter. I had just finished limbing it and had just started peeling the log when Russ Christensen came to inspect the foundation. It passed with no problems.

After Russ left, Earl Landin came by. After looking at the new septic system, I asked Earl to do me a favor and identify the species of as many of the logs as he could see. The logs are pretty old and hard to identify, but Earl did it anyway. Hopefully, from that information, I should be able to learn how to identify them myself.

After Earl left, I went back and finished harvesting the pole. I pulled it out of the woods and up to the foundation. I didn't pull it all the way in because it would be in the way of the remaining concrete work. Pulling that log was hot, hard work and the weather was beastly hot in the sun. To take a rest break, I went down and nailed ID tags on all the logs that didn't have them yet.

On Thursday morning I used up one sack of cement making concrete and pouring it into the bond beam channel at the top of the foundation. I did about half of the northeast wall. I had just finished cleaning up the mixer and the tools when Kevin, Marielle, and Marilyn drove up. They visited for a while, did a quick tour of the property and then left. I left shortly thereafter.

8/5-7/96 I went up to the property for 3 days: Monday through Wednesday.

The weather was moderately cool on Monday, but got progressively hotter on the next two days. I started out making small sheet metal forms for the tops of the girder pockets. These would encase the two #5 rebar going over the top of the pocket but still leave enough room for the beam. The top corner of the beam will have to be notched to accommodate the concrete and rebar, but there will still be 5 or 6 inches of bearing on the bottom face of the beam.

When the forms were in place, I started mixing and pouring concrete. By 7:45 PM I had used up 2 sacks of cement and had almost finished the entire foundation.

On Tuesday, I mixed a small amount of concrete in the wheelbarrow and finished the concrete work on the foundation. There is still more masonry work to do to make the stove hearth and the porch column bases, but that can wait. Now that the foundation is finished, I can start working with wood and logs. This is quite an exciting milestone for me because now my thoughts are concentrated on the problems of dealing with the logs.

The first order of business is to build a crane to handle the logs and other material. I rigged a temporary block and tackle to a tree on the high rock and used it to pull the crane pole into position. While it was still laying on the ground, I prepared the rigging that goes on top of the pole. I drilled a half inch hole about 8 inches deep into the very end of the pole and then drove a 2 foot piece of #4 rebar into the hole. To prevent the top from splitting, I wound several turns of galvanized wire around the end of the pole and twisted it tight. Then I tied a knot in two 3/4 inch ropes so that three guy ropes came out of the knot. I also tied in a big shackle to hook on one end of a block and tackle strung with 5/8" poly rope which will hold up the boom. I also connected a length of mason's line so that I could hang a plumb bob from it so I could align the pole.

When the pole was ready, I connected the temporary block and tackle about 2/3rds of the way up the pole in order to stand it straight up. I also connected 2 temporary guy ropes to this point. I used an old boat trailer windlass, that I had gotten at a garage sale, to pull the free end of the block and tackle rope. That made it easy to pull and also held it in place so I could periodically inspect or adjust ropes and such.

Once on the way up, I had to prop the pole up with a couple of 2x6s so that I could take up slack in the rigging because the block and tackle came to its end. When I resumed lifting, I had a near disaster; I noticed that two of the three strands of the rope in the block and tackle had broken. It had broken between the windlass and the block connected to the tree. As soon as I spotted the break, I got another rope, went up the tree and connected the new rope to the old one above the break, then I pulled the other end tight and made it fast. This held the load and ended the crisis. Fortunately the remaining good strand held through all of this so there was no disaster.

Now I backed the windlass off, disconnected it from the old broken rope and connected the windlass rope to the new rope going up to the block. Before resuming lifting, I took the long end of one of the 3/4" ropes up the tree near the top block, looped it over a branch and strung it and tied it to the pole. This was a safety precaution in case the rope in the block and tackle failed again. Each time I pulled the pole up a ways with the block and tackle, I would pull the safety rope tight and fasten it to a big rock. That way, if the old rope failed, the safety rope would hold the pole up.

When the pole was finally in its final position, I connected the three guy ropes to trees and I connected the lower end of the boom block and tackle to a column base at the other side of the foundation. This held the pole in place so I could remove all the temporary lifting rigging. This proved to be a little hairy.

The rigging was attached to the pole about 2/3rds of the way up the pole, which meant it was about 20 feet off the ground. I thought that maybe when the tension on the rigging was relaxed, the chain connecting it, which was loosely wrapped around the pole, would drop down by itself, or with a little jiggling. No such luck. Just the weight of the rigging was enough to keep the chain loop tight.

To reach the chain, I stood a long ladder on a ledge in the cliff above the foundation and then leaned the ladder out from the cliff and up against the vertical pole. It felt solid, but looked awful scary. As a safety precaution, I put on a climbing safety belt and connected it to the 5/8ths poly rope with a knot that I could slide up the poly rope as I climbed the ladder but that would hold fast to the rope if I should fall. I also kept one hand on the 3/4" safety rope as I climbed and was prepared to hang on to it if I should fall. With these two safety measures, I felt no anxiety and I climbed up to the top of the ladder and released all the temporary rigging. I did look down as I let some of the rigging fall, and it gave me a weird feeling of respect for the position I was in.

When the job was done, I eased my way back down the ladder, sliding my safety knot down with me. I felt a great sense of accomplishment looking up at that pole. I had thought through most of the details of how I would erect this pole and most of the moves were accomplished according to plan. Others were devised ad hoc as unforeseen circumstances and opportunities presented themselves.

I was up in a tree making a final adjustment to one of the guy ropes when I heard the phone ring in the trailer. I ran down to get the phone and it was Ellen making her normal nightly call. It was already 7:45 PM and I hadn't taken a break since lunch. I had really been in the "flow" state all afternoon.

On Wednesday morning, I attached the boom pole. This was a much easier job since it was nearer the ground and didn't have as much rigging. When the boom was attached, there was another sort of hairy, hard job. That was attaching "Oscar", the quarter ton winch, to the end of the boom. Priscilla told me that Leonard had called this winch "Oscar" all the years he used it, so I decided to continue the tradition. Oscar will be my main workhorse in moving material including logs up to the building.

Oscar weighs about 70 to 90 lbs. and is much too heavy for me to lift very high or far. I can get it from the ground into a wheelbarrow is about all. Oscar needs to be attached to the boom 32 feet out where the block from the vertical pole is attached. This makes it out of reach from the ground. When the boom is laying over one corner of the foundation, that spot is about 4 feet beyond the foundation wall, and 8 feet above the ground.

To get Oscar up there, I used my trusty long ladder. I fastened the boom so it couldn't swing, and set the ladder up on the ground leaning against the end of the boom. Here again, the ladder was sort of hanging out in empty space. The top of the ladder was three or four rungs above the boom so I fastened a block and tackle on the top rung and used it to lift Oscar out of the wheelbarrow below. Instead of hooking Oscar's top hook into the hook on the lower block, I inserted a loop of stout wire between them. That would make transfer from the lifting block to the shackle on the boom possible.

When Oscar had been lifted so the top hook was just a little above the shackle on the boom, I held the lifting rope in my left hand and used my right arm to swing Oscar over toward the boom trying to get the point of the hook to go into the shackle. It wouldn't quite reach. I got a hammer and used it to try to move the shackle closer to Oscar but that didn't work either. I then went back to my first technique and by straining and teasing I finally got the tip of the hook to barely reach the clevis pin. I slowly backed off on the rope while I kept jiggling and pushing the hook. As the weight gradually transferred to the shackle, the hook slid down over the pin where it belonged and the lifting rope went slack. This was a very gratifying moment for me. Oscar was finally where he belonged. The loop of wire, which made this technique possible, was now stuck looped around the hook and shackle. I could have untwisted it and removed it but I left it there for use in getting Oscar back off by sort of reversing the procedure.

From here on, it was just fun. I rigged control ropes, the electrical power cord, and a tie down for the boom lifting rope. I tested the rig with a light load of the two stair runners that were on top of my lumber stack. With these runners suspended above the foundation, I went around taking pictures of the crane and its load from half a dozen vantage points. As the number of words I have written about this attests, I felt very good about what I had done. The time was about noon and I wanted to get home to give Ellen a ride home from the dentist, so I packed up and left for home.

8/10-11/96 Ellen and I went up to the property and spent Saturday night in the trailer. On Sunday morning we hiked up to Poe Mountain and then hiked into Hidden Lake. The lake is not named on the map and the trail is not shown on the map, but some other hikers told us about it. It was sort of hard to find but it is a beautiful lake. We had invited Earl Landin to join us but he was unable to make it.

8/12-14/96 I went up to the property for 3 days: Monday through Wednesday.

This week the plan was to install the pressure treated sill planks and get some experience using the crane in the process. I started out by lifting (and weighing in the process) 310 lb. of lumber from where it was stacked outside the foundation up to the top of two scaffold frames that were holding up my scaffolding. Oscar had no problem lifting the load, but I was unable to lift the boom by hand with that load on the hook. I rigged up the boat trailer windlass to pull the boom rope and that worked fine except that I needed a more sturdy mount for the windlass.

I built a sturdy mount for it attached to the central northeast CB88. I also attached a cleat to the base of the vertical pole to secure the boom control rope. With this rig, I can cleat the boom rope while I take up slack or connect the windlass rope to the boom rope. After making a pull with the windlass, the boom rope is again cleated so the windlass is not used to hold the load except when it is actually pulling.

Paul Wagner stopped by late in the afternoon and we visited until 8:30 in the evening. He looked over my work and took the grand tour to see the property and the spring box. He is an interesting young guy who owns 30 acres in the flood plain west of Worley's. He also plans to build on his property.

In working with the crane, the plumb bob from the vertical pole was off center to the southeast which made the boom want to swing in that direction. So the first thing I did on Tuesday morning was to go up the trees and adjust the guy ropes to pull the pole into a more vertical alignment. I had just finished this when Larry, Roberta, and their friends Ted Turner and his wife stopped by and visited. They also took the grand tour to see the spring.

In the afternoon, I lifted 600 lb. to test the limits of the rigging. Oscar is rated at 500 lb. and was able to lift the load from the ground but if the load was suspended it was unable to get it going up again from a dead stop. Fortunately, it was able to lower the load from a dead stop. This was a successful test because it means that I can't overload the crane or its components; Oscar won't lift any more than the crane can handle. To move heavier loads, I will have to use blocks attached to something other than the crane, and use the crane and Oscar to pull the free end of the line. That will give me the lifting power of 500 lb. times the number of lengths of line between the blocks.

I got started installing the sill sealer and sill planks on Wednesday afternoon, and resumed the work on Thursday morning. The weather was beastly hot so I tried to keep working in the shade.

There was one snag that slowed me down quite a bit. The pressure treated sill is wider than the concrete block wall so it sticks into the building about an inch and a half. Unfortunately the scaffold frames were set up snug against the block wall and they stick up above the wall right in the way of the sill. To fix the problem, I had to move and re-seat all the frames. One pair of these frames was holding up not only a scaffold plank, but also about 600 lb. of lumber. Fortunately Oscar was there and it was no problem to lift the corners of the frames so I could make the necessary adjustments to them.

Earl stopped by about mid afternoon and we talked about hiking Poe Mountain and also Mount David. He also told me he would give me a couple lengths of stout rope. I told him I would stop by and pick them up on my way home.

Later on in the afternoon, my drill quit working, so I took it into the trailer to see if I could fix it. I discovered that one of the brushes was almost seized up so I worked it loose. Just as I was about to put the drill back together again, a couple of guys came up to the trailer and wanted to see the project. They were builders who were building houses near Lake Wenatchee. After showing them around and visiting for a while, they left and I put my drill back together and tested it. It seemed to work.

I went back up to work on the sill and when I tried to use the drill, it not only didn't work, but it started smoking. I decided that that was the end of the drill, and also the end of my work week. I put away the tools, packed up and left for home. I forgot to stop at Earl's for the rope so I will try to remember on the next trip up.

8/19-21/96 I went up to the property for 3 days: Monday through Wednesday.

On the way up, I stopped at Earl's and picked up the two ropes. After chatting for a while, I left and on the way saw Ron Sideritz in front of his place. I stopped and chatted with him for a while before I finally got up to the property about 12:30.

The first thing I did was to rewire Oscar's electrical connection. I brought 30' of number 10 wire with me and I had previously connected a male plug to one end of it and I had prepared a 4x4 box with two double receptacles in it. I took the single female receptacle off the main power supply line and connected it to the other end of the 30' wire. This made an extension cord that I connected to the boom and plugged Oscar into. I then connected the 4x4 box to the end of the power supply line. This allows me to plug 3 cords into the power in addition to Oscar. I used to think that wiring with 12 gauge wire was tough, but 10 gauge is even worse. It is like wiring with rebar!

When that was done, I finished installing the last two sill planks using a brand new drill that I bought. The old one gave up the ghost.

The moment of truth was now at hand. Installing the sill was the last job to complete before I needed to begin lifting logs. Needless to say, I had lifted logs and imagined the problems I would have, many times in my mind. But no matter how much I thought about it, I was still not quite convinced that my rather puny looking crane rig would be able to get those very heavy looking logs up that steep high cliff.

One of the problems that I had tried to work through and solve in my mind was to figure out what combination of cables, chains, ropes, shackles, blocks, etc. to use between Oscar's hook and the logs I needed to pull. I had sketched some ideas on paper, but since I didn't know exactly what lengths of cable and chain I had, I couldn't work out an exact plan. Instead I just started hooking lengths of cable together and starting with Oscar's hook, worked my way down the cliff, through the brush, toward the logs.

The short of it is that it worked out better on this first attempt than I could have planned. With the exception of replacing a shackle with a hook, to make connections easier, the first rigging I put together is the one I will use for all the logs (unless there are some extremely heavy ones that will require some more pulling power).

The rigging consists of two connected 30' lengths of cable, a choker chain, and another longer chain laying loose at the top of the cliff. Attached to the shackle that connects the two cables is an extra chain hook and a long rope. The rope is the one that broke on the block and tackle while I was raising the crane pole. Since this is a nice long rope and it is not serving a critical function, this is an ideal use for a nearly useless rope.

To pull up a log, I hook the end of the cable combination to Oscar's hook and let Oscar's chain out to the max. I hang the chain and cable over the edge of the cliff and then walk down to the log stack. When I get down there, I pull on the other end of the cable combination, and it just reaches the log stack. Then I put a chain choker around the log I want to pull and connect it to the hook on the end of the cable. Back up on the cliff, I start Oscar and he pulls the log off the stack and across the driveway before he runs out of chain. When he does, I reverse him and run the chain all the way back out, feeding the cable and chain back over the cliff.

At this point, I make the second (and last for this log) trip back down to the log pile. The end of the log has just reached the bushes so I don't have to go into the bushes to work. Next, I pull on either the rope or the cable end to pull the lower cable section out of the bushes. This places the hook between the cables within reach of the choker chain. I pull as much slack out as I can and hook the cable to the choker and go back up on top. Oscar now pulls the log right through the bushes with ease and right up the rock cliffs. Depending on where the log tries to go up the rocks, in some cases it has gotten stuck. In these cases I just go down the cliff to the log and rock it, or pry it with a short 2x4 and it dislodges and jumps up over whatever was hanging it up. From here, I can pull the log only another 4 feet or so before Oscar runs out of chain.

Then I reverse Oscar again and let all the chain out. As it is coming down, I take the cable off the hook and replace it with the loose chain that is laying on the ground nearby. When the chain is all the way out, I use it to sort of rappel down the cliff to the end of the log. The loose chain is long enough to reach the choker chain and after I connect the chains, I use the chain to climb back up the cliff to pull the log up further.

The first two logs I pulled were short cull logs. Starting with small logs was sort of a test but I also used these logs to make a ramp up the last part of the cliff so that the logs won't tear my rock wall apart as they come over the edge. I stood these two logs next to each other with their tops just sticking up over the top of the rock wall. Then I drilled holes through them and pinned them together with two lengths of #4 rebar. These two logs were #29 and #90.

The next two logs I pulled, #43 and #38, were 12 and 15 feet long respectively. They were quite a bit heavier than the first two but Oscar had no problem pulling them. After they were up the ramp and on the road, I rigged to lift each of them horizontally and set them down right on the scaffold at the top of the foundation wall. I then set the choker just above the center of the log toward the top so as I lifted the log, the butt dragged across the scaffold as the log raised into a vertical position. When it was high enough to hang free, I gently pushed the butt of the log over to the corner of the foundation and had Oscar lower it all the way to the ground. I used the same procedure for both logs.

These two logs stick straight up at each of the two high corners of the foundation. They will be used as lifting poles, as taught to us by Skip Ellsworth, to help in lowering the sill log and threading it through the vertical rebar sticking out of the foundation.

I experienced a wonderful sensation of delight and exhilaration during this whole activity. Everything I tried worked so smoothly and so easily and yet I had a healthy respect for the fairly large forces that were at work. I especially remember the feeling I had when I was gently pushing the free hanging log into the corner of the foundation with my left hand while my right hand was controlling Oscar with gentle tugs on a rope. It was as if I were manipulating an object that only weighed 5 lb. instead of the 400 or so that it really was. There were several times after finishing various maneuvers that the exhilaration would literally take my breath away and I would find myself grinning and chuckling out loud. These are some of the pleasurable moments that make all the hard and dirty work on this project worth it.

During the raising of the second lifting pole, Bill Cattin stopped by and introduced himself. He is Earl's brother in law and he had seen me when I picked up the ropes at Earl's place. He is a very interesting guy. We toured the property and chatted until about 5:30.

After Bill left, I finished setting the second lifting pole and then selected a big log for the first sill log. The log, #14, was about 40' long, but I cut it down to 33' because that is how long the sill log needs to be and I didn't want to lift any bigger log than I needed to just yet.

Again I was surprised at Oscar. He had no trouble lifting that 33 footer which means that I won't have to use any extra blocks in my rigging except for possibly the 42 footers when I get to them, and I will probably only have to use a single block for them. That is good news.

I quit for the day after the big log was lying up on the roadway next to the foundation. I had pulled up five logs in one day which tells me that pulling logs up the hill will not be the time consuming activity that I thought it might be. That is extra good news!

On Wednesday I spent a lot of time looking at that big sill log. It, like the rest of the logs, looks pretty bad. They are all grayed and checked because they have been down for so long. I decided that it will be a lot easier to work on the logs before they are put into the building so I decided not to set this sill log into place just yet. Instead I did a lot of scraping on the log with various tools to see what worked and what kind of wood I would find under the rough discolored surface. I also realized that the logs should be treated with borax before they are put into place, and I haven't got any borax treatment yet.

Since I wasn't going to proceed any further with the logs, I took the opportunity to do a couple of other chores that needed to be done. First, I measured and recorded the near end diameters of all the logs. This will help complete the database I am building of the inventory of all the logs and their characteristics. When that was done, I used chains and a come-along to restack three big logs that Mike Dickinson had moved and left lying on the ground. Fortunately the ground has been pretty dry so even though these logs have been lying on the ground for a few weeks they didn't look like they had suffered much if any damage. They did need to be gotten off the ground, though, and I am glad I took the time to do it.

Entire Journal by Year: 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008