Woodsmen's Days

We did a fun thing yesterday: went to the "Woodsmen's Days" in Tupper Lake, NY. It's a (very) small town in the heart of the Adirondacks, beautiful to drive to, about 80 miles from here. The weather was gorgeous--you should see my sunburn. Or maybe not.

ANYway. Readers from Wisconsin will recognize this kind of event as one held in Hayward every year; I'm pretty sure Hayward's has been on ESPN. Tupper's is probably smaller but it's still a really big deal to them.

We got there at about 10:30, the time that the newspaper had given for amateur competitions to begin. All that was beginning at that time seemed to be the set-up for the competitions, which IMHO should have been done the day before! So competitions didn't begin until about 12:30. Truly annoying, especially because we never intended to stay all day. As it was we left well before the events I had really wanted to see. What we did watch were chain-saw slicing--three slices as fast as you can from a clamped-down debarked log; log-rolling--40' in one direction until it touches a stake at either end, then 40' back to touch stakes again; ax throwing--double-headed ax thrown at a target; and bucksaw log slicing--a 4' bucksaw to slice 3 slices from the chain-saw log. Impressive. Really. Fairly dangerous, especially in inexperienced hands, I imagine! And there was a chain-saw-carving competition from which the resulting sculptures were auctioned. (I cannot imagine what the liability insurance must cost for an event like this. Got to be godawful!)

The events that we didn't hang around for, which probably didn't take place till 5 or so--grrr, were a springboard chopping contest and a tree-felling contest. The latter was to be done using about a dozen 20-25' poles (basically limbless trees) set into the ground that contestants went about debarking and marking for their cuts. I heard another spectator say that not only would they be battling for the best time but the "tree" was also supposed to smash a watermelon. So it had to be fast and precise tree-felling!

The other event was to take place using a larger-diameter but shorter limbless tree, about 7-8' tall. On the top of this was staked a 2-foot "log" similar to the ones used for the chainsaw competition (but much shorter ;-) ). The contestant had to use an ax to cut a chink into the "tree" and drive in a springboard, then hop onto that and chop the log on top. Apparently this is somewhat equivalent to what loggers actually used to do to top trees in the forests. Sort of like standing on a moving limb, I would guess. Talk about dangerous.

You can see why I did want to see these events, but it just wasn't worth getting caught in the traffic jam that would happen when everyone left. Traffic jams in small towns are more annoying than in big cities, I'm convinced, because they never happen. So we left about mid-afternoon. I didn't bother to take my camera because I knew I wouldn't get good photos of the events.

It was fun. The equipment was impressive, probably the most eye-opening piece being the bucksaw. Four feet of unbelievably sharp steel teeth--teeth about 4" deep--that apparently cost $1500-3000 and $500 to sharpen! The women pairs we saw competing were tough, tough, tough. Wow.

And we ate Italian sausage with peppers and onions, which is standard "fair-fare." Yum. Now my sunburn will tan so I'll look great at the wedding in Wisconsin in a couple of weeks. Cannot wait for that!