Alaskan Logging Equipment, Left to Rust

Exceptional pictures

Contract Logger,
Glad that you have chosen to take along a camera on your many journeys around the Panhandle. It's easy to see way all this equipment is still laying around, just kind of sad. Please keep posting more and more pictures. I personally really enjoy seeing them.

As a young man living in Anchorage, I remember watching Rogers & Babler Bros. uncover a complete track mounted concrete mixer while digging for fill material in an old Beck-Norcoast yard. Made many a trip to gold mining country, lot's of equipment left rusting there as well.

That was quite an impressive display of model logging equipment on your other post. You got serious talent, and lot of time invested.

Thanks again for all the great pictures.
John

I would love to spend a day poking through places like that,or many days.Some day I will find my "B" mack like that.Found an LT inEnumclaw Wa. one time,just didnt have a place to put it!Please keep the pics flowing!

Thanks for the pics and the history lesson Logger.
Makes me sick to think about all the people our government put out of work just to save a bunch of dead and dying "old growth"

Old growth timber is just like all that equipment- the older it gets the less it is worth. Even in the logging heyday here, the old growth cutting yeilded darn little good saw or board material-it stands there rotten or dying, it is mushy low-value pulp wood. Great for paper, but little value otherwise. The areas that were logged over the years are now producing some of the finest stands of hemlock and spruce you have ever seen- all natural regen as no replanting was ever done up here. Our earth and its resources are amazing, the problem is human nature, stewardship, and laziness. Sureley we are inteligent enough to manage this resource better than we have been. I am very pro-logging. And I am very pro-environment. I am not anti-government, but they cnnot effectivley manage anything well it seems. Not even my post office or DMV, LOL. Anyway, I wasnt blaming Government or even Bill Clinton, it just gets frustrating when I have so much faith in people and common sense-- that we can manage without destruction. Our predecessors just couldnt/wouldnt figure out how, and we pay for it today with no timber jobs on the Tongass. They were either too greedy, to lazy, or both. Enough politics, back to the equipment pictures! Thanks for listening.

Bears.

There is one very real problem I have with exploring abandoned areas looking for/at equipment: Bears are curious. And they are everywhere- including in my front yard sometimes. Anyway, I never wanted to be a 'Wildlife Photagrapher', but I have become one out of circumstance rather than desire. Often I'll go looking for an old Madill yarder someone told me about, and come home with 30 or so yarder pics and about 350 bear pics. I dont carry a weapon, never have. Most people here dont, as bears arent dangerous, just curious. They follow you like a puppy through the woods. People who havent been around bears tend to feel stalked or hunted, so they get scared or run, and its all over then. Just like a cat, the faster you go the faster they chase. Instinct takes over by now, and you have made yourself prey. Very bad scenario. Bears and other wildlife are a HUGE part of my rusty equipment hobby, so I will sprinkle some wildlife pics in this thread if its OK by Steve and everyone else. The thrill I get when I find an old yarder on a spur road is intense, and the thrill I get meeting a 900 pound brownie on my way back to the pickup is equally intense. Fortunately, I have lots of pics of both!
Bears dont scare me anymore. Wolves still do. Here are some bears from my neighborhood. Most of these I took on equipment expeditions.

Those last two shots are at an old log yard in Yakutat. People throw trash around there and the bears were everywhere. The ranger has been tracking them and says he has 13 individual bears in that area he watches. As you can see, this big boy is in the thousand pound range. I took about 75 pics of him, and he seemed to love the attention. OR, he thought I was gonna dump garbage maybe........ Shame on people for this.

People suck. They leave trash all over and bears come running. This is logging related, cause it an old yard and there were a bunck of rusting pieces there that day, just wanted to show you what i have to deal with to get these pics.

Driving 15 miles out of town to dump your trash must be easier that paying a $5.00 dump fee. Never made any sense to me either, given the costof gas up here. Idiots.

Back to equipment.

Skagit GT5D Yarder, rusting in a rock pit near Whale Pass. This was a big grapple yarder, and very majestic in its heyday of the 1970's.

This would be a fun model project I think. Big and heavy,just the way we like them.

Same rock pit as above. This is a Washington TL6 and was the loading shovel for the GT5D above no doubt. I have no idea who owns all this stuff, but given the state of the bridges on either end of the pit, these machines will never leave this place in one piece. The pickup coming in here made me nervous on one of them. These machines would collapse them and be lost in the canyon for sure.

Logging gear at the old Klawock sort yard. Lots of gear around here doing nothing. I have alot of pics taken here you wil enjoy I hope. Never have seen any bears here, though........

More Klawock Alaska area. This gear is more modern- from the 80's.

Klawock round 3.

That Barko 475 there wasa good machine- mounted on a Cat 235 bottom as you can see. Check out the piece of concrete parking curb added to the Komatsu PC300 counterweight- talk abou 'might be a redneck' counterweight, lol. They actually built brackets and bolted it in there..........

'We Be Log'n'!

This is a Bucyrus Erie 30B I think, not completely sure. It does have the newer 'highwalker' undercarriage, but alot of older machines were retro-fitted to this style. Anyway, its a cool machine, parked at the old sort yard shop there in Klawock.

Lots of old rucks left to rot away there also.

More old logging trucks. Pics taken Jan 2010. Little or no value here. These newer trucks wouldnt fetch $2,000.00 at auction, and it costs $3,000 to get then to Seattle from here. Larry Derry is the owner, and he has about 20 trucks parked around the island. Someone said he was retired, in Idaho now.

More Klawock pics. That TMY45 Thunderbird is a neat little yarder, I was told the engine was blown up, and that it was not worth fixing.

its funny when i joined this forum i all ways went to the excavator section first because thats what i do for a living . but now every day first thing i do is come to the Forestry section to get the next installment .i hope or would like to get up there one day to look around. its the history that fascinates me the most how and what it was done with and thanks to your photos what it look like. THANK YOU and please keep it coming