MacMillan Bloedel Ltd. Red & White Iron, Past and Present....

[jackd]

Crew of J161 - Sproat Lake Winter show.

This thread has been dormant for too long - it doesn't deserve to be sitting on page three. My old crew from 1980. I would really like to get a very detailed picture of the S Madill logo sticker that they put on the guy line winch cover.

 

[jackd]

Sparmatic Crew

Here's a shot of the driving end of the old J87 which we towered up out past Sutton Pass in Taylor River. Great machine - I have the builder plate from the hulk of it mounted on my basement wall.

 

[TorkelH]

Some Sproat Lake pictures

I agree in it is a shame letting this thread sleep on page 3, I was going to post some pictures yesterday, but the network stopped working. And then you came in before me, nice pictures!

 

[TorkelH]

Madill 044 double mains

Two 044's at sproat Lake division. Murk100: I am pretty sure the one in picture 1 to 4 is #133 (one of the last one built, it is the same as in my videos) and the one in the last picture is #115 (Y02), if it was not a unit moved from another division.

 

[jackd]

How does a guy from Norway get pictures from Sproat Lake Division? Any idea who those people standing around the grapple are? The shots of the shop bring back lots of memmories. My marshalling yard was right below the last trucks in the photo. That might be H323 - a P16 pre-load parked out near the fuel pump station. I used to push broom in those shops and drive the HDX's around to the trailer hoist to get them ready for the morning. These shots are taken after I left in '82. My old 044 was a tag line machine and these seem to have double main lines. Great shots.

 

[JeremyM70]

I agree in it is a shame letting this thread sleep on page 3, I was going to post some pictures yesterday, but the network stopped working. And then you came in before me, nice pictures!

Awesome pictures! I recognize the 2nd and 5th one from your Skagit slackline videos.

 

[TorkelH]

Sproat Lake

How does a guy from Norway get pictures from Sproat Lake Division? Any idea who those people standing around the grapple are? The shots of the shop bring back lots of memmories. My marshalling yard was right below the last trucks in the photo. That might be H323 - a P16 pre-load parked out near the fuel pump station. I used to push broom in those shops and drive the HDX's around to the trailer hoist to get them ready for the morning. These shots are taken after I left in '82. My old 044 was a tag line machine and these seem to have double main lines. Great shots.

Good question! I have been one of very few yarding contractors in Norway, and because of that I was early facinated by logging on VI. So in the late 90's and early 2000 I visited Franklin and Sproat Lake several times. Even if it is big differences between the industrial forestry on VI and contracting cut-to-lenght logging on small land owners in Norway I feel I have picked up a lot of knowledge and "widened my horizon", as to say, travelling around on VI and the West Coast. Luckily enough I have taken pictures and videoes on these trips, and for many years i thought no one but me was interested in this!
I don't know the guys on the picture, but the one in blue shirt is the yarder enginer, the man left of him shadowed by the crane end/grapple was at this site driving the line horse. I don't remember his name, but I picked up a ride in H325 with him to the yarding site at the old highway. Later I met him working as a hook tender on the same gy you can see in the first pictures. I think the yarder enginers name was Bill, very clever guy. I have put out a lot of videoes with this machine working on the oposite side of Sproat Lake (from these pictures) on YouTube.
I also include a picture from the cab of one of the challenger trucks at Sproat Lake.
Maybe you recognize the norwegian operator of the super snorkel, his name is Hank, I enclose a picture. I have also put out videos so you can see his skills as a loader operator. He even had built some full working models of gy's and loaders, you will find a picture of it somewhere in this forum!

 

[jackd]

Hank Bakken

I remember Swedes coming over to Sproat Lake back in '77 - who were amazed at the size of our logs that we were pulling out of Branch 302 up above Two Rivers Arm on Sproat Lake. My rigging slinger career was starting to come into it's own then.

The person you have a shot of was Hank Bakken - who at that time ran loader out in Ash River. I've enclosed a picture of him from '79 - the people are R to L - Hank Bakken, Al Ferguson (Fergie), Ben Schaefer & Tom Russell. We were working up in the back end of Ash River and were enjoying a lunch break on a nice fall day - back when I worked on the GY Y35. Great times.

When I left Sproat Lake in '82, Hank was in the process of building a model of an American loader for Eli Evans - a retiring operator who supposedly was a pioneer in the development of the snorkel on loaders. A bunch of guys were trying to create this model from scratch and I lent my knowledge of modelling to the mix. It sounds like Hank did finish the project in the end.

 

[TorkelH]

Jackd - here are the pictures of two of the models, full working and for educational use. He used viper motors to power the different functions. You'll also find link to youtube and some very long videos of a grapple yarder working there above Two Rivers Arm.
Hank Bakken is from a farm district out of Stavanger, Norway. It has almost no forest and is one really flat part of Norway. I live some 500 km north up the coast, and there most of the terrain is very steep, and forested. I remember he asked me, as he had been a farm boy growing up in Madla, if it was forests in Norway, he couldn't remember to have seen some trees when he grew up...

https://www.heavyequipmentforums.co...-in-Nanaimo-BC&p=229107&highlight=#post229107

 

[jackd]

I think the American loader was modeled after the machine that Hank ran back in the good old days - I think it was the L-102 - I could be wrong. I wish someone could set me straight on what was out there in those days by providing a M & B equipment list. From what I remember, the model undercarriage was made of steel which would not be an easy material to manufacture a model out of. I think that HDX knows Hank quite well through the antique logging truck bunch in Port Alberni and McLeans's Mill. Hank, from what I hear is now retired and actively involved in preserving the logging history in the Valley.

 

[4 PLEY]

it's always nice to see pictures from my sproat day's ( those were good times and we all grew up out there ). How you been jack ? I learned alot working with some good loggers over the years but you were my first ringslinger and kept me alive long enough to teach me the basics. It's been 32 years and I'm still kickin' and still learnin'...Thank's Tony

 

[jackd]

Tony!

Yup, you found me... It's been almost 30 years since we worked together - where did the time go? Here's another shot of us from what I guess would be 1980 or 81 - me hooking and you pulling rigging. Actually we were towering up the Sparamatic out by Sutton Pass - possibly Branch 513. These were the days of Sewardchuk, Melvin Cain and Norm Smith.... Angelo Serina running loader - the L353 with Mike Oliwa (K-Mart blue light special fanatic) bucking. We had a lot of fun on that crew, didn't we? This is one of the shots that John Spencer (the guy in the middle - Son of Alex - Sproat truck driver) brought to my home. I will send you a PM to give you more news.

 

[jackd]

Found This in the J-87.

I scrounged through the yarding cab of the J-87 when it was parked near Woodward's pit and found this. The builders plate from the winch is hanging on my basement wall.

 

[4 PLEY]

life after sproat

it's always nice to see pictures from my sproat day's ( those were good times and we all grew up out there ). How you been jack ? I learned alot working with some good loggers over the years but you were my first ringslinger and kept me alive long enough to teach me the basics. It's been 32 years and I'm still kickin' and still learnin'...Thank's Tony

It's going to take a while to get the hang of this ...After we were layed off from sproat I hired on at Eve river and worked there til 85' when I transfered back to sproat Div. and stayed there until the end pulling rigging and hooking on towers,grapple yarders and slack line. I now work for don woodfin as a grapple yarder hooktender. ( it's still a good living but it's non union and the conditions arn't what they use to be ). Let me know what you've been up to and please feel free to E-mail any time at [email protected]

 

[skadill]

Hayes

Think I recall being told this was a 1957 truck,took this last year.Truck was Lineham Loggings , most likely sold by now

 

[trakloader]

HDX, tell us a story!

 

[jackd]

J-73 Sproat Lake Division

Found some more shots in my files which I haven't posted. It's always interesting to go back to where you used to work 20 years previous and find things from the past. Picture taken about a decade ago.

 

[jackd]

Sparmatic Down

This is what it looks like when you lay a 120' Tower down. This happened on the west side of Nahmint Lake in the winter show in the early '80s. They were finished yarding and were towering down. To tower down the Sparmatic, you had to slack off all the guy lines, extend the tower slightly to unlock the locking ring/dogs and then slowly slide the upper section into the lower section. The raising ram on the Yarder is fixed to the lower section, unlike the Madill. So if all goes well, the towering down is an easy affair - you get her down inside the lower section, pull in the slack on your guy line drums as you are lowering her, eventually the guy lines can be unhooked for the stumps and you're good to go.

Well all goes to plan until one of your fairlead guy line winches decides to remain engaged and drags her over. Supposedly it all happened in slow motion - she went over like a ship rolling over. The chaser was running in and out from under the yarder - not knowing where to go to be safe. As soon as he ran out, the guy lines started to rain down on his head. So he decided to cower under the thing and ride it out. I imagine it was very traumatic in the final moments as the yarder started lifting away from above him and exposed him to the final moments of her going over. No one got hurt and they put a used pipe on her quickly - back to work.

Sorry for the compilation pic. I didn't have my wide angle lens that day. I think I cropped the corner of the photo to remove my ex-girlfriend's head. I should have married her, at least she would go out to look at these things.

 

[trakloader]

Old M&B Firetruck

This WAS the QCD camp firetruck, sat in the firehall from 1978 to 2002. 520 original miles, then they sold it and someone did THIS to it.

 

[jackd]

First Guy Out Of The Bus

Logging up above Two Rivers Arm on Sproat Lake - spring of '77. There goes the operator - Ray Samual - to fire her up and build up the air before joining us back in the crummy for mug-up. The loader was the L-231 - with Al Cameron operating. Great wood and a wonderful view of Sproat Lake.