High Leading and the Pole Climb

Have you heard of "high leading" before? Maybe not. Have you heard of the pole climb before? Well, if you've attended any CILA competitions, the answer would surely be "yes." The event is a popular and thrilling spectacle in modern loggersports competitions due to its fast-paced, high-flying nature. If you blink, you might miss it. Historically, pole climbing is based on the actual work loggers had to do when climbing trees to top them, rig cables, or install other gear in high branches. This is where the term "high leading" comes from.

With the invention of steam-powered "donkey" engines in the late 1800s came the ability to yard logs more efficiently. The idea was that through rigging an intricate system of cables to fixed points on the ground the donkey engine could pull the logs to where horses could get at them. Eventually, people started experimenting with rigging their lead cable to the top of a tree, termed the "home" tree or "spar" tree, which is where the term "high leading" comes from. By the early 1900s high leading was taking place on the coasts of British Columbia and drastically improved production.

It was the "high rigger" who was tasked with climbing the tree, sometimes upwards of 180 feet tall, to affix the cables. He would climb up it much the same way we watch pole climbers scale poles at any CILA competition, by "twitching" up the pole with a rope, aided by the climbing spurs on his feet, and then top it with his axe. Imagine the wobble of the tree, 180 feet above the air, as the top came off!

Source: Whistler Museum

Eventually, loggers would get even more creative with their cable rigging systems, employing skylines to yard logs. The sky line was like a fixed cable between two high points, with an enormous pulley that rode along it, attached to which was the log. Yet another even more highly-powered donkey engine did the work.

Note: Much of the information in this post was taken from Donald MacKay's widely available 2007 book "The Lumberjacks," published by Dundurn Press. It's probably the most comprehensive account of early forestry operations in Canada from the 1700s to the mid-1950s that I have seen.

Adrian Pearson