02x01 - The King-Maker Claim

[bunniefuu]

One of my mentors early in life told me that logging

is a very bumpy road.

And it is. I've fully embraced that.

A lot of my competition,

their dads handed them the business.

They didn't spend 20 years in a machine like I did.

Hard work, sweat, and blood and tears.

That's where you see the best of people.

When your crew know that you do everything you can to fight

for them, it's like a code,

like a brotherhood.

You're building this empire together.

I'm excited about this year.

I have an absolute dynamite opportunity to level up fast,

and I need to capture it.

I wanna grow this business

to watch other people's lives thrive,

and I'm not gonna stop until I do.

There she goes.

Previously...

...on "The Last Woodsmen."

Back up!

Jared Douglas took the biggest risk of his career for control

of a logging company of his own.

If I don't have $1.1 million by the end of this season,

I'll lose everything.

!

Navigating a barrage of setbacks and expenses.

Hey, Jared.

Looks like we're gonna be a little late today.

It's not good.

And after an all-out logging push...

Watch out, watch out!

...Jared emerged as the comeback king...

Yeah, buddy!

...and the master of his own destiny.

My time to grow the company the way I want it.

Nobody's holding me back.

Now...

- Whoa!

...Jared and his crew doubled down

on an even bigger gamble...

She's alive!

A Forever Claim's just came available,

and we're going after it.

...to carve a logging legacy from virgin territory...

That's a big rock.

...and grow the business he built from scratch...

Oh, fire!

...at any cost.

This might be the end.

I have no realm of not taking risks.

Make it or don't.

No matter how stupid and up things are,

I just never give up.

My goal right now is to change the game

for Cypress Creek Logging.

Failure's not an option.

Not a bad day for flying.

See all that bigger timber?

That is the destination.

It's early spring in the rugged timberlands

of the Pacific Northwest,

and all along the coast,

logging season is in full swing.

Look at this. It's not touched.

Jared Douglas, owner of Cypress Creek Logging, is on course

for one final scout of a virgin timber claim,

an opportunity that could grow his business like never before.

I am putting myself this season in a very risky position

through the thick and the thin.

This year is all about expansion.

Lots of big wood. As far as the eye can see.

Place a guy could retire in.

There's a good spot right there.

OK, yep, I've got it right here now.

They call it the "Forever Claim."



filled with some of the most coveted trees on Earth,

timber giants at the end of their life cycle,

and worth tens of thousands apiece.

So many of them. They're just everywhere.

It's insane.

My God, look at the size of that tree!

Look at the timber! Look at the value!

But it's not just the trees that make the Forever Claim

a logger's promised land,

it's the logging rights that come with it.

Unlike most timber leases, which span only a few months

at a time, this lasts a lifetime.

We would have the right to harvest that timber as long

as our business stays in business.

This is the holy grail.

When you own that claim,

you have the most secure business plan in logging.

You can leverage everything for expansion.

It's a big deal.

But the deal is far from done.

The Forever Claim is up for blind auction for the next



Using his own cash and a line of credit,

Jared placed an aggressive one-million-dollar bid,

but he's still $200,000 short.

He has 10 more days to raise it...

or risk defaulting on his bid.

This is a logger's dream,

and I need to capture it.

I need to buckle down, take every cent, and I mean

every cent that I can, to show up with cold, hard cash.

Since buying out his business partner,

Jared and his float camp crew

have been hauling and splashing timber

at a fever rate,

all in the Mowachaht/Muchlaht territory

of First Nation's Chief, Jerry Jack.

I really appreciate the opportunity

working together.

But with that lease due to expire in a couple months,

failure to fund the bid and losing the Forever Claim

would put his logging season in major jeopardy.

Hey, Ross, you wanna get everybody in here?

Uh...

So, the barge arrives the day before the bidding period,

so we have less than two weeks to get an extra $200,000

worth of profit on that barge.

So this is where we're gonna make it happen.

Right here.

It's full of big wood, big firs, big cedars.

And the only reason it's still there is because it's such

a pain in the a*s to reach.

We gotta get this wood on the barge.

Pfft. , dude.

To log $200,000 worth of timber profits in 10 days,

Jared's plan is ambitious.

Fallers Jim and Rob will hunt

for big, untouched trees

in the remote mountains of Float Camp.

To access those logs

and get them back down to the water,

Ross must clear a 20-mile road

for the haulers.

Meanwhile, Jared and Adrian

will try and resurrect

a grapple yarder critical for the success

of the all-out effort.

Let's get to work.

Twenty miles away from Float Camp,

fallers Jim Gardner and Rob Winger

close in on the remote, mountainous pocket

of money trees identified by Jared.

Their mission is urgent.

Days bleed dollars quickly in logging operations.

So in order to successfully secure the company's bid,

big timber must be cut, transported, and barged

faster than Jared has before.

We're flying out here?

Yeah, unless you wanna walk.

No, I don't.

My name is Jimmy Gardner. I'm a hand faller.

I've been logging since I was 18 years old.

I started lowly on the chokers.

I was on the skyline.

I moved up and worked on ambulance, grapple yarders.

I was 40. I needed challenge.

I found falling.

It's got the conflict.

Everything about the conflict I love.

Man versus self, man versus nature.

Everything about this job is challenge, and you overcome

challenge every day.

And that's what I love. That's what I enjoy.

This one's not bad.

Hello?

Is anybody home?

Somebody little was living in there.

I don't think I'd fit.

Yeah, this one's a beauty.

- Número uno? - Yeah.

You want to bore it?

Yeah, man.

When we're testing a tree, we do what's called boring it.

You're sticking your saw in and you're cutting until

all the good wood gives.

Ah, it doesn't sound very good.

This thing is rotten.

After six, eight inches, this tree dove right in because

there's no more holding wood. It's all just rotten inside.

So, all we have is a thin little shell

all the way around this tree.

If we even start the undercut, this could barber chair.

Of the many dangers fallers face,

barber chairs are among the deadliest.

And they happen when unstable bases like this one split up

the middle and kick back with bone-crushing force.

So much that if a faller is within striking distance,

the results are almost always fatal.

It's deadly.

Hopefully, you can cut quick enough because it's just

a shell by the looks of it.

Ugh...

What do we got good for this tree?

There's a nice saw log in the middle of it.

To keep this barber chair tree from kicking back while

preserving the more valuable wood further up the trunk,

Jim will have to work fast.

First, he'll make his undercut in the weakest part of

the trunk, hoping the healthier wood, or "holding wood,"

will keep the tree upright.

Then he'll make his back-cut as quickly as possible and pray it

comes down clean before it has a chance to kick back.

I got faith in you.

-Don't roll your eyes at me.

Let's do it!

Yeah, buddy! Here we go!

-Making some noise! - OK.

We've got a big job ahead of us.

It's gonna be a lot of cutting.

It's gonna be a challenge.

For this tree, we'll do our best to control the direction,

but time's gonna tell what it's gonna wanna to do.

It's gonna do its own thing regardless.

There's a possibility that I'm gonna be cutting,

and this thing's gonna commit when I'm cutting.

This could flip off the stump. This could do anything.

It's literally anybody's guess.

-Let's go!

Go!

- Go!

Holy !

Whoo!

That was intense.

When I said, "It's going," the whole root

started pulling out of there.

It just pulled right out of the ground.

Yeah, that kind of scared the crap out of me there.

-Did it? -Yeah.

Big time.

You fall a tree, and there's always some sort

of breakage with that tree, but our job is to get the most

value and volume out of every tree.

This thing was pretty rotten,

but it stayed up really well.

Back piece stayed one piece.

It didn't barber chair and dangle above my head.

That's probably the best-case scenario.

Project accomplished. Really great job.

-Nicely done, Jim. -Thanks, Rob.

Safe and sound and down. Good to go.

Three days later,

while fallers continue to hunt and stack money trees

in the High Country,

ten miles below...

foreman Ross Davis plows a road packed with winter landslides.

!

Sometimes mother nature puts up a fight.

It's been 36 hours of grueling uphill battle,

but Ross now faces the heaviest stretch yet.

Jared wants to get some wood in the water immediately.

The trees don't hit the water, nobody gets paid.

So getting this road opened up is crucial.

Get the logs to the beach and make some money.

My job title is woods foreman.

I'll take care of a lot of the day-to-day,

put out fires,

pick up the slack, just keeping the operation going.

Sometimes it's loading some logs or clearing a road

like this, doing whatever I have to do for Jared.

Well, that'll work, I think.



There's still so much I don't know.

Started at the bottom, bundling logs at 15 years old,

and now I'm a foreman.

I've been doing this for almost 10, 12 years, so...

now I'm wondering what the next step is for me?

.

Looks like we kind of had a fresh slide up here.

We'll sometimes see the winter.

I mean, there's some big rocks here, big holes in the road.

Yeah, this isn't just gonna be a one-pass kind of fix, so.

Yeah, this is a...

like, that's a big rock.

This is a setback, no doubt about it.

Further down the mountain...

Look at this old diamond in the rough.

...Jared and bush mechanic Adrian Bailey inspect

his oldest grapple yarder to pull it out of retirement.

Oh, boy, all right. What are we in for?

Let's go take a look.

Just one of these machines can haul five truckloads

worth of timber off the hillside per day.

And Jared's going to need every machine he's got

to fill the next log barge.

But this one has been sitting idle for years.

This old yarder, it has a reputation.

Seems to have a mind of its own,

so I'm a little concerned.

It's pretty imperative right now to get this thing

operational and head up the hill.

ASAP.

Think that's good?

Yeah.

I got Adrian, one of my best mechanics

here with me today.

They call me the Iron Doctor.

He's proved himself time and time again getting

this old iron running.

The Salvage Slayer.

We'll be bing-bang out of here, no problem.

- Oh, holy !

Man, you OK?

I just crossed the connections, sorry.

We're good.

You're lucky those Goldilocks didn't catch on fire.

That was close.

All right, all right, no more sparky sparky.

Working for Jared is challenging,

it's fun, it's exciting, it's a lot of hard work.

It's also just wild, crazy, smash it, thrash it,

eat it, burn it, it, sh**t it, rock it, try again.

Let's go!

Because it's a lot of steep ground.

Oh, no! Watch out!

Watch out! Whoa!

It's usually rugged, dirty, band-A*DS, zip ties,

Whoa!

Crossing wires, weldy-weldy, quick and dirty.

There ain't no warranty in the bush.

Let's rock and roll, man!

Tell me when.

Any time.

Give her...

She's alive!

Just like that.

Dude!

Whoo-hoo!

Make her talk, baby.

Make her sing.

Yeah, these old girls, you're expecting some

major problems, but it runs. It runs strong.

It runs good. It's actually amazing!

I'm gonna head for the mountain, man!

Hell, yeah! Sounds good.

Ready when you are, Jared.

OK, let's try this bad boy out.

-Here we go!

So far, so good.

.

Yeah, she's a little temperamental.

Tell it to do one thing and it does the other.

What a piece of !

You're on here, Adrian?

Yeah, go ahead.

Something's going on with this thing, I can't make it --

I can't, uh, figure it out here.

Definitely acting all different and goofy.

OK, here's a wide spot if you want.

There's a couple gremlins in this girl.

Ah, .

Oh, .

Oh, .

Oh, .

- Hit it.

-Whew. -What the , dude?

Smells like electrical to me.

It smells exactly like burning electrical.

OK...

Why would it do that? Why is it doing that?

Think the mice?

It could be.

You got these little critters growing in there.

So, you know, they're definitely chewing

on wires and stuff like that.

But I do think that it is a good machine.

And a pain in my a*s.

These old yarders are the Clydesdale of the industry.

You have to pour the work into them.

You got to pour the love into them.

If you don't give up on them, they won't give up on you.

What do you see in there, bud?

Bunch of melted wires.

Now melted hoses too.

Is it fixable?

Yeah, I'll replace everything burnt that I see,

and then we'll kind of have to go from there.

Probably some bush monkey just like me ran these wires,

and they're not in the main harness, and this is kind

of what happens over time, but I am also not gonna run it

in a harness because here we are in the bush again.

Who has the time for that?

-Done like dinner.

Go ahead, on her.

Fire in the hole.

We'll give her another shot,

try to get it up the mountain here.

You ready?

Let's try this again.

All right, here we go.

Get the quirks worked out of her and she’ll be great.



Hoof! Look at this mess here.

Yeah, we got a little bit of work to do.

Should be able to push this around.

I guess there's only one way to find out.

You can't get trucks up here. We can't get a loader up here.

We can't get nothing up here.

We need to have wood hitting the water.

So, I got to get this thing cleared off immediately.

Jared, he can't stop in one spot.

Jared has to keep going. He has to keep moving forward.

I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing,

but I think everybody's just got trust in Jared

and in his decisions.

He works hard and he's a smart guy.

Back up in the High Country...

Looks like there's some nice cedars down here.

Looks like a nice cedar.

Yeah, man.

- Got a big split there. - Right down the gut side.

Oh, there's some sound wood in there, though.

It's leaning down and at this fir hard.

Hmm.

This fir is leaning up the hill.

So...

To get rid of the cedar, you gotta get rid of the fir.

In order to get rid of the fir, you gotta get rid

of this cedar first.

So...

Oh!

That doesn't sound right.

There's absolutely no holding wood.

So this is just, as you can see, it's free-floating.

The nice cedar, it's got some issues with other trees

in and around it.

So I got a bit of a triple threat going on.

Huh, lovely.

How the hell are you gonna cut this thing up to go that way

with no holding wood?

There's a will, there's a way.

Jim and Rob's plan to tackle this triple threat --

Rob will first put an undercut in the middle tree,

followed by another in the one highest up the hill.

Then he'll move down to the most dangerous one

and cut just enough to make it weak.

Finally, he'll put his back-cut in the middle tree,

followed by one more up top

to send them all down like dominoes.

Worst-case scenario here, Jim,

is this thing's gonna break off

with my saw in it.

Bend my bar or flatten my saw.

-With you underneath it. - With me underneath it.

So I'm gonna start with this fir first, Jim.

-Just put the undercut in here. - All right, pal.

Let's do this, Jimmy!

Sometimes you have to fall multiple trees at once.

It'd be more dangerous to try and wedge these over

by themselves or fall them by themselves,

but you never know.

Say a little prayer.

Say a little prayer.

High above Float Camp...

Rob's got a big job ahead of him.

He's gonna get his together.

- What do you think? - Yep, that looks good.

I put an undercut in the middle tree.

Then I'm gonna put an undercut

in the top nice cedar.

So, I'm gonna have to...

keep my holding wood into here.

I have to put undercuts on my push trees before I can cut

that danger tree.

Otherwise, I'll have a cut-up tree to my back,

which I don't want because it's really dangerous.

It's gonna be a bit of a tricky situation.

I'm Rob Winger. I'm a West Coast faller.

I've been doing it for 27 years.

Falling in general is all physics.

You're transferring weight.

And there's easy ways to do it and hard ways to do it.

And if you use the principles of physics properly,

it's gonna make your job a lot easier.

OK, now I'll fuel up and then I'll go

cut that thing up.

And then it's concentration time.

OK, you ready?

Yeah, man.

OK, eyes up on this one.

Moment of truth, bud.

Ready?

Once there's a cut put into this and this tree is gonna

be weakened structurally, it's gonna be sagging

and going with whatever lean the gravity's gonna point it to

which is definitely up the hill at Rob.

Wouldn't want it to be me, to be honest.

I'm glad I'm watching today.

Whoo! Ooh.

-Oh, is it sitting back? - It started to move.

That's bad news.

This could go prematurely,

but now you've got 120 feet of tree

chasing you up the hill.

You can't run 120 feet in five seconds.

-Ooh.

It's scaring the out of me.

Ten miles down the mountain...

This is turning out to be

a little bit harder than expected.

We need a new direction to push from.

We're gonna have to clear out around it, and we'll go

at her full throttle and see if we can we can't get

that big nugget outta the way

so we can get through.

I'm an operator at heart.

I don't wanna do it all the time.

I sat in the cab for a long time.

But I love getting on a piece of equipment and doing whatever

I have to do to make the job go better.

Whew! All right.

Back in business, man.

I think we can haul some logs out there.

Whoo!

Oh, Jared’ll be happy.

With the road to the High Country now clear,

further below...

And here we go.

Jared's moving pretty good.

...Jared and Adrian begin the grapple yarder's



.

-Adrian. -Yeah, go ahead, Jared.

We got smoke again.

I'm on my way.

fire!

Get the piss can!

Oh, .

.

Holy .

-.

Ugh!

There's a water truck down the road!

I'm going for it!

!

Oh , man!

This is bad.

Beautiful cedar wood.

This is incredible.

Truly magnificent.

For Jared Douglas,

logging means a deep respect for the land.

First Nations and loggers are the biggest stewards

of the land, 'cause we live out there.

I have been working with the Mowachaht/Muchalaht First Nations for 15 years.

I'm very proud and I'm very honored to be able to work

in their traditional territories.

You know, we wanna make our living, logging the land

and planting three trees for every one we harvest.

We're standing on exactly what happens if we don't

harvest these trees.

I'm a hunter. I'm a fisherman, too.

You think I wanna wreck the streams, creeks,

and salmon returns? It's not happening.

You know, healthy forests, only we do it responsibly,

it's our way of life.

It's our rite of passage, and it's a great way to be.

Hurry up with that truck, Jared!

In the Pacific Northwest, the grapple yarder critical

to Jared's 10-day scramble is ablaze.

.

If not extinguished quickly, it could set off

a catastrophic fire in the tall timber.

!

.

This is a up, dude.

.

! Come on, baby! Come on!

Come on, run.

Get running.

!

Come on!

Hit it! Hit it!

Holy , man!

, dude.

Ugh!

Come on, you son of a !

There's smoke on the other side still, Jared.

Let's pull the hose here.

Yeah.

High up the mountain...

It's starting to move.

It's scaring the out of me.

...Jim and Rob have three timber giants

almost ready to drop in tandem,

but one of them threatens to fall early.

I think I'll leave it now.

We'll back-cut the fir

and then hit it.

OK, man.

Rob's gonna do his best to keep all this wood together

and falling together so it all cushions and stays whole,

but to be perfectly honest, it's anyone's guess.

OK.

So this is your last tree?

That's it.

This is the finale.

This is going, Jim.

Back up! Back up!

Whew!

Holy Jesus!

There's a mountain of wood.

Well...

Deadly.

We're both alive though, that's the main thing.

Very, very good.

Look at that fricking fir!

High-grade.

Best one of the bunch was that middle fir tree,

and it saved out to 113 feet to the first break,

and it's all high-grade and saw log.

If Jim and Rob can keep landing trees at this rate,

Jared will be well on his way to raising the final $200,000

he needs for the Forever Claim.

But with one of his yarders officially down...

Holy , man!

...moving all that timber onto a log barge in less than

seven days will be a struggle.

It's charred earth, man.

Like, it's toast.

Blew the windows right out of it.

Windows gone.

Machine gone.

Man, that was like a Roman candle!

Rubber and wiring.

Once it catches.

That was insane.

.

In this business, we bleed cash.

I got mechanic trucks and services, which cost.

Burning fuel is cost.

So, it's very important to keep your costs down so you can

make more profit.

That is how a logging company survives.

So, this loss of this machine is catastrophic right now.

It's like a man down in the army.

When we lose a machine outright, it hurts.

Definitely a setback, major setback.

Right now, as a boss,

I up.

You just have to have it in your heart.

You have to have it in your guts.

You just have to have the grit to get back up after you fall.

Everybody depends on me,

and I do not wanna let them down.

I won't quit.

I'll quit when I'm in a pine box.

Let's get to work.

Next time...

There's a brotherhood in logging.

If we want a shot at the Forever Claim,

we have to get every load we can get.

You fight hard for that guy

because you know he’s fighting hard for you beside ‘em.

Trailer’s locked up there, big guy.

.

What the .

- Look out. - Heads up.

This is a business that you live, breathe,

and can die for.

That's what this company is,

and we're gonna take that to the next level.

This season, on "The Last Woodsmen."

That's a big tree.

I want the Forever Claim, not just for me...

...but for my crew and their family.

Holy ! Stand back!

I could do this all day, every day.

Oh, wait, I do.

I don't know if I'm gonna be able to pull it off,

but failure is not an option.

I'm gonna do everything in my power to make that happen.

I'm gonna lose my .

This is the biggest move I've ever done.

-I need to make this happen. -You got one shot at this.

The most stressful, the most money

I've ever put out.

That did not go as planned.

But in this business, if you're not growing, you're dying.

Please, just get us to that point.

Abandon ship.

That Forever Claim is gonna be a game-changer for me,

and a game-changer for my people.

And I'm gonna get it.