Posted by Tim Holloway on Sunday, January 15, 2006 at 9:03AM :
About a year ago a neighbor approached me about moving a cabin for him. Seems he had built it with one corner of it on his neighbors land. The biggest complication was that it was on top of a knoll, 150 feet high, with no roads to it. The easiest slope was a 45 degree pitch, loose rock and leaves. There was a clear path to the top, I suspect it had been logged wth horses at some time in the distant past. So the owner (John) and I climbed up and surveyed the situation. I told him I could winch the PW up the hill move the cabin and winch back down. I told him how to put skids on the bottom, what trees needed to be moved and how to prepare the cabin for the move.
Fast forward to early october. John calls and says he is ready to go. We set a date and the morning was clear and cold. I loaded up all sorts of chains, come-alongs, snatch blocks etc. and drive over to his house. We head into the woods behind his house and get to the knoll. Just for grins, I tried to drive up the slope. The loose rocks and dead leaves gave me no traction so it was back to the original plan. Johns wife Patty was there with her camera so I left mine in the glove box. We ran the winch cable all the way to the top and put a strap around a large Ash tree there. Started her up and engaged the winch. Sllowly up we went, all the while thinking things like "just stay running, dont let that cable snap, etc. The gods were with us though and we arrived at the top, almost like we knew what we were doing! We drove over to where tha cabin was and I set up the truck for the move. Patty was taking tons of pictures and had even shot some video of the trip up the hill. I set up snatch blocks to steer the cabin around several obstacles, and by lunchtime we had moved the cabin about 40 feet into its new location. That process went flawlessly. We had lunch and then spent the afternoon jacking the cabin up to level and installing cribbing under it. We gathered up the tools and I parked in front of the big Ash tree to connect up for the trip down. I considered driving down for about a nanosecond and envisioned the truck turning into a toboggan. Not liking that vision I hooked the cable back to the strap on the tree. I put the winch in reverse and started lowering myself down. Then I had the vision of the cable lettig go and being a toboggon in reverse! Really bad thought. But once again it went smoothly and in no time I was back down on flat ground. Everything dad gone exactly to plan, nobody got hurt, nothing broke and it was alot of fun. Patty said she would get me a cd with all of the pictures. I couldnt wait to post some of them here with this story. So time went on and finally a few days ago I asked her about the pictures. She said that they had looked at them on the camera, but when they went to download them they were gone! So, I have no pictures but lots of memories.
Tim
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