sixdogs - It was myself, my wife & 6 year old son. There were a couple times friends helped but they were basically more problems than help. They had no idea how easy it was to get hurt and how to avoid the dangers involved. Example - friend helping peal the logs. Pulled my HEAVY draw knife into his knee - had to take the remainder of the day getting to hospital to get treatment.
We worked every weekend from May thru October and took two weeks off - midsummer. Had a permit from the State to cut trees on their land. I harvested 135 logs - 30 feet long to build the cabin. Logs were cut on State land approximately ten miles from cabin site. Loaded six logs at a time on heavy duty trailer and drove them to cabin site. Each log was individually winched up to cabin site with winch on Jeep. Cabin site is 125 feet higher than the road. Log was then two-sided with Alaska mill and pealed. We were able to do one complete row(4 logs) per weekend and have four more two-sided and pealed for the next weekend. The remainder of the time was dealing with the main floor, loft floor, roof, insulation etc, etc.
Man - could I have used the tractor & grapple I currently have. I had winch points(snatch blocks) positioned all around the site - high up on the trees. Winch line from Jeep, thru snatch block and then attached to log. Wife ran the winch and I would grunt/manhandle the log up the side of the cabin. Once the log was on top of the wall - it was pretty simple to gently and VERY carefully move it into position. In all of that grunting, pushing, cursing etc, etc we only "lost" one log. I pushed it too hard and it fell to the ground on the inside of the cabin walls. My hands were constantly getting pinched, mashed and smashed. Fortunately, nothing was ever broken.
The cabin site is approximately 25 miles NNW of Anchorage - across Cook Inlet.
