An early spring left loggers high and dry.
Early March was nail-biting time for the old-time lumber woods boss.
Each time a “jobber” contracted to harvest a given quantity of merchantable timber from a lumber company’s holdings of standing pine, he bet blind in a high-stakes poker game. Many variables would decide the outcome: The quality of the standing timber, the nature of the terrain, the cost of hiring and feeding men and horses, and, especially here in the snow belt, how much effort would be wasted while battling snow. But most critical of all was the weather during the sleigh haul.
Cutting and skidding of sawlogs usually commenced at the beginning of October and finished by early January. Now, with perhaps 50,000 sawlogs piled on skidways facing the haul roads, the jobber turned his attention to the next stage, transporting them to the ice surface of a lake or the bank of a river to await the spring log drive.
If the weather cooperated, the job would be completed before mid-March. If it didn’t, a share of the harvest might be left in the bush. So the latter half of the sleigh haul always amounted to a frantic race against a possible loss of the roads brought about by an early spring.
An interview I once did with Walter Scott, who “jobbed” logging operations out of McKellar close to a century ago, reveals the anatomy of a log-haul road starting from the ground up.
“I’d make the roads as straight as possible; they’re cheaper to keep up in the long run. I’d just as soon go through a swamp because it’s more level than the high land. And I used to cut down great big trees to save a bend in the road. I came along one day and the “buck beaver” (road-making boss) was going around big trees. I said, ‘If a big tree makes a curve in the road, take it out.’”
Not just straight, but straight-and-level was Walter’s way. Large trees couldn’t be chopped low enough to avoid leaving a bump in the road, so here’s how he coped with the problem.
Axemen grubbed out and chopped off all the roots on one side, allowing the tree to uproot as it fell away from the road, leaving a flat surface where it had stood.
When the snow came to stay, preparing the base of the right-of-way began. To let the frost penetrate, horses dragged a wooden plough the length of the road after each snowfall. Swamps first had to be “tramped,” either by oxen, which worked better in boggy places than did horses, or by men wearing snowshoes.
Finally, the road was “paved” with a layer of ice, built up with repeated applications of water spilled from a sleigh-mounted wooden tank.
The road had to be maintained throughout the two-month log haul. “Sandpipers” controlled the descent of heavy-laden sleighs down hills, by shovelling hot sand into the runner tracks. A poorly maintained sandhill might cause a catastrophic “run,” a threat to the life and limb of both teamster and team. “Gipers,” about one per mile, patrolled the road levelling ruts and shovelling off runner-grabbing horse manure.
And here in the snow belt, heavy snowfalls had to be dealt with.
“I cut my roads 16 feet wide,” Walter said, “so I’d have lots of room for snow. When the snow would get high, I used to take a vee plough and chain it on top of the bunks of a sleigh and push the snow away back.”
Work had to start before daylight to allow teamsters to get their expected number of trips in before the afternoon sun softened the road. And with 10 or more sleighs hauling on a single-lane road, it was essential to keep traffic moving.
“I’d pick my best teamster and put him in the lead,” Walter said. “A lot of fellows would [prefer to] slink along and hold the rest of them back. If you put a good lead team on, they’ve got to keep up.”
Most hindrances could, with planning and effort, be worked around, but one potential obstacle lay beyond the control of the cleverest bull-of-the-woods, and that was an early spring breakup.
Clear sailing for log hauling was counted on until the middle of March, with a possible safety margin of a week to ten days beyond that. But every so often nature threw the jobber a curve in the form of an early and lasting thaw. The ice surface of his roads disintegrated, “hot spots” erupted in swamps, bare ground poked through on high ground, and log hauling lurched to a halt. It only added insult to injury if, “In like a lamb, out like a lion,” winter returned at the end of the month. By then, haul roads were irretrievably lost for the season, and any skidways of pine stranded in the bush would be quickly rendered valueless by wood-riddling larvae of the white pine sawyer beetle.
But thanks to careful planning and a measure of good luck, that never happened to Walter Scott.