On any cruise you have the option of choosing multiple things to do in port, and in Ketchikan I chose two, the walking tour I described in my last post, and a lumberjack show in the late afternoon. I’m still not sure why I decided it would be fun, although it had its moments. But it was primarily a huge testosterone festival, with two competing teams of lumberjacks (U.S. and Canadian) showing off their skills with long-handled axes, two-handed saws, and gasoline powered chain saws. The photos I took are the last 13 in the Ketchikan gallery. I’ll share some of them here. Here’s one of the U.S. contestants:
Lumberjack competitor (U.S.)
See what I mean by testosterone?
They began with a demonstration of chopping a short log in half, using a long handled ax, while standing on the log.
Chopping log in half while standing on it
They also competed at throwing the ax at a target painted on the end of a log:
Throwing axes at a target
And chopping a log in half while not standing on it:
Chopping a vertical log in half
Finally, they chopped a log in half while standing on a “spring” – the board he’s standing on is not supported except where it’s bolted to the bigger log, and it springs up and down. I believe this is a Canadian competitor.
Chopping while standing on a springboard
And of course, they had gasoline-powered chainsaws. There’s a photo of them in the gallery using one to cut “leaves” (thin round slices) off the end of a log, which they also do with two-handed saws. Why you need to do that escapes me. But the one that blew me away was the attempt to “carve” a rabbit out of a short log, using a chainsaw! Here it is in progress – see the ears?
Carving a rabbit with a chainsaw
And here he is holding it up by the ears. It doesn’t look like a rabbit to me:
This is a rabbit?
The announcer didn’t seem to believe it either, they were arguing about something in the next photo in the gallery. They had a competition to see who could climb a pole faster, and they finished with the classic log-rolling contest. Here’s the American competitor again:
Running along a floating log
I also got a shot of both of them doing it at once but this shows the technique better. As you can see, there were a number of heads between me and him.
But I missed the best photo of the event. It happened so fast I couldn’t get my camera up before he moved. Remember the photo of the U.S. competitor? He’s holding a long-handled ax in his left hand, next to his thigh. Now imagine that shot with a chainsaw in the hand, held at about that angle! Testosterone city…
