This morning, I took down the offending trees that were leading to its "partial obstruction." It was -8 (Fahrenheit), and I had to spend about half an hour shoveling a path to the four trees that I was targeting--a process that included shoveling steps on both side of the snow berm left by the front-end-loader that had cleared our driveway on Monday. I planned out the order that I would take down the tree based on both their locations and the directions that I expected them to fall.
The first tree was a black spruce whose branches had intertwined with the birch tree that was my primary target for this hunt. It's trunk was already tilting in the direction I wanted, but it's "hug" made it so that it not only didn't fall at all, but it trapped my chain saw's bar and blade. I disconnected the bar from the body of the saw, trudged back to the garage, put on a backup bar and blade, trudged back, and then cut down the birch. It, too was leaning in the correct direction, so the two tree fell down together--right where I wanted them. I retrieved the bar and blade that I had left.
I then moved to the third tree. This one was smaller in width but taller, and also seemed to be leaning in the direction that I wanted it to fall. Unfortunately, as I was making the final cut, the tree decided to tip in my direction. I heard a snap and felt it grab my chain saw blade. I immediately let go of the chainsaw and ran down the path that I had shoveled which happened to be near a tree that had fallen on its own years ago. I didn't take the time to look behind me, but I could hear the tree falling faster in my direction, so I dove into the snow next to the fallen tree with the hope that it could stop the other tree from crushing me. Just then, the tree fell just a few feet to my right, leaving me mostly unscathed. I say "mostly," because while diving, I landed on a hidden branch and injuring my left thigh--even though I haven't seen a bruise, it's feels like I hit it pretty hard.
I looked back and couldn't see my chainsaw. After a bit of digging, I found it under the tree that had just fallen. With some more digging, I was able to extricate it and was gratified to find that it still worked. I needed it as the tree had fallen over two places of my meandering snow trench.
I decided to still take on the fourth tree despite being injured and feeling a bit shaken. This one was also clearly leaning in the direction that I wanted it to fall. However, once again, it fell 90 degrees from my intended landing--this time directly away from me. This was actually a more fortunate falling as, with where the last tree had landed, I would have had to do even more cutting to get back to my paths, but this way I didn't have to.
I then rebooted StarLink. We won't have its "map" of obstructions until tomorrow, but I'm already a bit concerned. As I noted above, it's still going on those long "searching" runs. That said--and this might just be my imagination--it has seemed more stable when it's been up today.