Kenny’s Loggin’ - Snow Clearing for Norie in Elk Bay, 1970s

Jan 20, 2022 - 3 years ago

In the early 1970s, I was watching T.V. when Dad got a call from Henri Norie. He was worried about the amount of snow on the shop roof in Elk Bay. Dad says get your snow clothes on we’re heading to Elk Bay. We went in my Dad’s Ford F-250 with chains on all four tires, my Uncle came along in his Ford-250. Most of the way once we got off the highway the snow was coming over the hood and covering the windshield. We had to stop and clean it off every so often.

Snow Clearing for Norie in Elk Bay, 1970s — *Crew in Elk Bay, shovelling snow from the roof of Nories’ shop in 1971.*

We made it into Elk Bay. My uncle fired up the D-9 and started plowing snow off of the road up Menzies Mountain on the Roberts Lake side. Nories’ wanted to get the yarder off of the hill so we could start logging in another area.

Meanwhile Nories’ had chartered a Beaver float plane and flew the crew into Elk Bay. They cleaned the shop off and a few other buildings.

The pilot wanted to help shovelling snow, but my Dad told him he couldn’t help because if he had a heart attack nobody else could fly the plane.

Meanwhile up the hill we went to get the yarder, it was towered down, so we snubbed it down the hill with the D-9.

A bit later we took the yarder to another area and rigged it up. Still lots of snow in this setting also. We managed to find a stump for the back quarter guy line and dug it out.

We logged the whole setting on this stump. When we drove by the stump later in the summer we saw that it wasn’t rooted in the ground, my uncle had pushed it up there when he was building road! This is the setting where I had to use a toboggan to move the tail blocks around the setting.

Ken Wilson worked in the logging industry in B.C. for over 50 years. Ken is a regular contributor to Supply Post newspaper with his column “Kenny’s Loggin’”, and resides on Vancouver Island, B.C.