HAND LOGGING AND ANIMAL SNAKING 
147 
slope.^ The trail is made 6 or 8 feet wide, cleared of obstructions 
and, when necessary, banked on the outer edge with skids to 
prevent logs from leaving it. Swamps are corduroyed, streams 
bridged and rough places covered with ''skippers." These are 
timbers 8 or 10 inches in diameter and 12 feet long which are either 
placed zigzag across the road, the angle between skippers being 
about GO degrees, or the poles are placed directly across the trail 
Fig. 29. — Skidding Trails leading down to a Skidway along the Logging 
Railroad. West Virginia. 
at intervals of from 4 to 6 feet. Logs drag over zigzag skippers 
more easily than over those placed directly across the trail. 
Rough chutes are sometimes built in the stream beds to cover 
rocks and other obstructions, when it is necessary to divert the 
trail from the slopes to the stream bed. Short-radius curves 
are undesirable because they decrease the draft power of the 
animals, and make it hard to keep a long turn of logs in the 
trail. Logs are brought down in "turns" made up of several logs 
fastened in single file. Eight men can build a mile of skidding 
trail in one day when there is only a limited amount of bridge 
and other timber work to do. On level stretches a two-pole 
I See Fig. 29. 
