Remember When?

30 YEARS AGO • JUNE 17, 1993

LOGGING NOT HORSE PLAY

ON WEST END

In the fresh mountain sunshine of an early summer day, a draft horse waits patiently for his owner to finish preparations so another log can be skidded down the mountain.

Doug Albano has been horse logging in Cabinet Ranger District for approximately 20 years.

Albano, who works for Vinson Timber Products, said the Forest Service tends to opt for horse logging on lands they especially want to protect, such as those with sensitive soil composition or where building roads would be too detrimental.

Albano, who was born in Heron, has been around saddle and draft horses all his life. His horse experiences began when he helped farm with them as a child. He was five years old when he started driving horses in a hay field, he said. He moved to the Yakima Valley when he was 10 years old. He started logging with machinery when he got out of high school.

Because he knew horses and he knew logging, horse logging as an occupation was a natural option, he said.

Albano said he likes logging with horses better than with machinery because it is quieter. Horse logging is more difficult, though, because everything is manual, he said.

Several differences exist between the two types of logging.

Horse logging is mostly downhill focused because it takes one-third more effort to go uphill. Logs for horses must be limbed on all four sides, while machine logs only need to be limbed on three. The trees must be felled in the direction of the pull. Trails for the horses must be built - a difficult task, especially in steep, rocky areas, Albano said.

Decking – rolling the logs to a certain location – is the most difficult work, according to Albano. Most times his partner helps him deck logs and clean trails.

After a log is felled and limbed, the horses are chained to it. They sometimes pull more than one, depending on the size of the tree. The trick is “trying to get enough hooked behind a horse to make it worthwhile,” he said.

The largest log Albano hauled with two horses was 36 inches by 18 feet, he said. A white pine hauled by one horse provided 530 feet of sawmill scale lumber, he said.

Albano turns his horses loose and lets them come to the landing (where the logs are decked), directing them with his voice. He seldom uses the reins, he said.

“In these rocks and stuff, I let them use their own way out of there,” Albano said.

Trees grow back rapidly from horse logging, according to Albano. He has logged throughout the area, in some places more than once. He has logged one site four times, taking as much each time without a clearly visible effect, he said.

Albano sets his own hours, varying them according to the amount of footage he wants to get in a day. That could take anywhere from six to 16 hours, he said.

The horse logger labors in the sun, rain, snow and hail. Albano prefers to work in the winter, when the trails are glossed up and the logs are easier to pull, he said. Heat is the worst thing on the horses, according to Albano. He waters the horses at least four to five times a day.

“Everytime I have a cup of coffee, I let them have a drink,” he said.

When he has decked enough, Albano calls for a truck to haul it out.

“The best part of the job is seeing the rear end of one of them trucks going out loaded,” he said.

Albano raises and trains his own horses. He owns four.

Before it performs in the woods, a horse must be taught at home, which takes lots of hours, Albano said. The horse must be able to respond immediately to commands and perform a high volume of work willingly.

The hardest part of training the horses is teaching them to walk, something they must do at all times, even when steep terrain makes them want to hurry.

The district used to support 17 horse loggers, but now only has two regular loggers with sometimes a third.

“It’s getting to be a lost art,” he said. “It’s getting to be hard to find a guy to drive a horse.”

Contributing to the fading of horse logging is a lack of people to teach it to, according to Albano.