Roughly five miles into the wilderness trail, you come upon an odd thing to behold. In the depths of the forest, towering pines and silence surround a literal and figurative giant—a huge yellow cable logging machine frozen in time.
It does not move, but this abandoned yarder says a lot about mountain logging in the good old days.
The steep, forested terrain of Montana made traditional logging difficult. Because there were only a few roads, there was little access for trucks to reach the felled trees. Therefore, loggers resorted to cable logging systems—often referred to as skyline logging or high-lead logging—to get logs above terrain obstacles.
Steel cables stretched across valley floors and ridgelines. Logs were suspended in the air rather than dragged on the ground. A yarder—state-of-the-art at the time—held winches and drums to power the logging operation. A carriage running along the cable whisked logs from the cutting site to a staging area (called a landing), where workers loaded them onto trucks.