Yair . . . These have turned up. They are of terrible quality but may serve to show some of the country I was cutting tracks into up in PNG. They were taken by a friend of mine in about 1968. Unfortunately the ones up in the steep stuff and jungle were destroyed in the '74 floods I believe I have mentioned this job in several threads. In particular the advantages of cutting down hill when benching . . . to the left in the first picture you can see the braided river that runs at the bottom of the ridge. I came up that razor back to the left there to start clearing off the landslides that had completely blocked the road that had been cut in by a D7 a few years previously. . . pushing off landslides was more dangerous than benching new country as the whole section could be unstable. As you can see in other pictures the roads and switch backs get completely obliterated by wet season landslides. Cheers.
Looks pretty inhospitable, kind of high desert maybe? Beautiful though.
How old are you!!!? I'm thought of as old. I was 12 years old in 1968. You've seen it all! The geometry of roads on steep land is still something of a mystery to me. Obviously, roads must be benched into the side of a hill. The real estate to make a workably flat switch back seldom is found. Here, the only working switch backs were literally switch backs; rail tracks built to move trees. I'll avoid calling them logs 'cause in the day these "Roads" were built they were removing whole trees by rail. The part that wasn't sold to mills for lumber, or tanneries for whatever they get from them, went to kilns for charcoal. VT once had multi millionaires producing charcoal. Willie
I always look forward to Old Picture Day! Thanks Scrub