Golden Hour Felling - Pulling an 85' Fir

This was the last tree on a small clearing project I did recently. An 85-foot doug fir, a few feet down a cliff essentially, and with a somewhat heavy lean in terms of both trunk and limb weight. The weight wanted to take it downhill and onto some big leaf maples that were critical to keep, so the goal was to get it uphill and land on the existing mess/work area. Using a BigShot I set a pull-line at about 60 feet, attached that to a Maasdam rope puller and put on a little bit of pre-tension. Next was to aim and make the face, which started as a humboldt but changed my mind and made it an open-face to keep it on the stump longer. As is common, firs like this have dry and dusty bark about 3” thick at the base so I cut that off on both sides of the tree to better see exactly where the hinge was and for the saw to reach through (the ‘sloppy’ cuts you see when I check the tip of the bar are just from removing the bark, they are not structural). Next the backcut was made fairly close to where I wanted to end up and wedges driven in as I made that cut. With the tree aimed and getting lift from the wedges, plus pull from the line, I returned to the puller to add tension, essentially bending the top of the tree into the intended fall direction. Normally this is a two-person process with one person on the rope puller while the other cuts and wedges (and communicating with each other), but I was flying solo here. Got back to the tree and it had opened the backcut off the wedges just slightly, so it was clear the hinge just needed to be cut a little smaller and the tree would go right where it was aimed. Knocked the wedges out, took another inch or two out of the hing and sent the tree on it’s way. Now you wouldn’t want to put this kind of tension on many species of trees, and even with doug firs there is a lot of nuance I won’t go into unless someone is curious, but when applied correctly is safe and reliable. I did end up brushing the little ‘bonzi fir’ I was saving with some of the limbs from the falling tree, but then again I was pulling an 85 foot tree 90-degrees away from it’s lean, so I still call that a success.