Sultan Shindig Celebrates a Rip-Roaring Logging Heritage

The streets of the city come alive with a street fair, car show, parade, fireworks, and live music. The heart of the event is the annual logging show in which loggers fly up poles, attack an obstacle course with a chainsaw, and throw axes. The Sky Valley has a rich and colorful logging history—and many of these competitors are still active in the industry.

Friday, July 12: 4:00pm-9:00pm

Saturday, July 13: 10:00am-Dusk

Sunday, July 14: 10:00am-4:00pm

Follow their website for updates on the event details: https://www.sultanshindig.com/

Chainsaws buzz and whine, echoing through the riverside air. Competitors strain their muscles, their boots sinking in the ground as they labor to cut through massive trees. The crowd cheers and hollers. Sawdust-filled winds carry the feeling of energy and competition. You’re part of this thrilling contest where skill and strength are put to the test.

There will only be one winner and they will be crowned with the honorary title of “Bull of the Woods.”

Welcome to the Sultan Shindig, an annual celebration of logging practices. The Shindig has been a decades-long tradition that fills the Skykomish River Valley with the thwack of axes and the cheers of thrill-seeking crowds.

Yet these are more than mere chainsaw games. These carefully-preserved timber practices are a dying art, a cultural heritage. The Sultan Shindig is a throwback to the logging days of yore that defined this valley.

The old ways don’t feel so old to former logger Frank Roesler.

Aged 93 today, Frank lives on his family property in Startup, WA. His family’s logging operation began after World War II when his brothers returned from the service.

At the time, Startup was a self-sufficient, remote community also known for raspberries and dairy. It consisted of two stores, two churches, two taverns, and a post-office. Logging was seasonal work, so all winter long lumber-felling families would charge their groceries to the small general store. After the first spring timber harvest, the first check would pay off the loggers’ debts.

Frank honed his experience in the woods with the Roesler Logging Company. Frank and his dad would fell trees with a 12 horsepower chainsaw with an eight-foot blade. The largest tree that young Frank Roesler felled -- he can still remember -- was fourteen feet, 3 inches in diameter. Frank’s brothers bucked the logs. At its peak, the family operation was harvesting one million board feet per month of fir and hemlock. They trucked the cut timber up State Route 2 to Everett for milling at the Buse Lumber Mill, Seattle-Snohomish Mill, and Scott Paper in Everett

The old way of logging required an entire crew to shop and haul the harvest: a chaser, a hook tender, a rigging slinger, and two chokermen. The crew cut timber, bucked it, hauled the logs up an incline, yarded the wood, and then loaded the pile onto trucks. Logging trucks had to navigate precarious mountain roads.

Eventually, Frank opened his own mill in Startup, specifically to cut cedar shingles. His cedar shake was mostly shipped to California to feed the postwar suburban housing boom. Frank’s mill cut 300 bundles of cedar per saw per day -- a remarkable output.

The cedar shake was (and still is) highly valued for its waterproof properties and most of all its durability. It would be worn paper-thin over the years and still hold up to the elements. At one point, Frank’s cedar was distributed in all 50 states.

Throughout his career, Frank adopted the self-sufficient spirit of the river valley he called home. He flew a Cessna to the Washington-Oregon border to pick up logging machinery parts for repairs -- it was quicker than having them trucked up. He had a helicopter license and air-lifted supplies out to stranded farmers when the Skykomish River flooded.

Logging and milling were an inherently dangerous business. Many millers wound up with missing fingers, or accumulating injuries that were even worse. Yet, the Roesler operation managed to perform “way above industry standard for injury,” according to Frank’s son Craig.

“Work hard, play hard” was the ethos of the backwoods. Most loggers came back from the woods to drink the evening and nights away, then roll out of bed in the mornings and do it again. This was their way of life for decades in the twentieth century.

Until a bird changed all that.

In the 1990s, the Spotted Owl became an unwitting icon of environmental change. As concerns for this endangered species heightened, the timber industry faced economic shifts. Logging restrictions aimed at preserving owl habitats triggered a transformation, highlighting the delicate balance between ecological well-being and economic pursuits in the timber industry.

Old-style logging was constricted practically overnight by millions of board feet. The Sky Valley’s lumber-based economy would never be quite the same.

Today, mechanized logging practices rule the forested slopes above the Sky Valley. A feller-buncher machine walks among logs, limbing them and processing them in a way that radically conserves manpower. Timber crews are much smaller thanks to automation. It’s a trade-off: less work, but also a smaller environmental impact.

Lumberjacks no longer harvest old-growth forest. The woods no longer echo constantly with the sound of chainsaws.

Of course, if you visit the Sultan Shindig today you’ll still see the sawdust flying. One person running the chainsaws will be Joshua Randall and his brother Jacob.

For the Randall brothers it’s a family legacy. Their dad participated in the event for twenty-five years. “I’ve been attending since I was in diapers,” said Joshua. “I started running a chainsaw as a kid.” From there it was a natural progression for him to start shimmying up poles -- another logging skill from days of yore. Today he competes in all the events.

These skills ultimately pushed Joshua and his older brother Jacob into their careers. They both operate tree services. Their jobs require the ability to safely climb, limb, and fell trees. Josh started in this field at age 18 and opened his first business at 24.

And he seems to be a natural. Joshua has won multiple Bull of the Woods awards (maybe eight or nine of them — he’s lost count). The Bull of the Woods title comes with a cash prize, trophy, and sometimes a custom engraved throwing ax.

“I appreciate the Sultan Shindig games because the event brings together the old guys in the valley and keeps [the logging spirit] alive,” said Josh.

And this logging spirit... well, it may be as endangered as the spotted owls as the Sky Valley drifts further from its timber-based heritage. “I see very few participants of the next generation,” said Josh. “We’re trying to pull new people [into the lumberjack games].”

The Sky Valley has also seen a recent increase in population. There are close to 8,000 new homes in the valley, most of them built since the pandemic. By most accounts, many of the recent transplants are former city folk, drawn to a quieter locale, a smaller city, and the desirable option to telecommute.

Joshua Randall feels the imperative to share this history with the recent transplants, to familiarize the newcomers with traditional logging practices.

Time is a funny thing. You can’t always tell where you stand in the scheme of things or see the progression of the years from a large enough perspective. As a cultural heritage and dying art, the Shindig creates a throughline, a continuity from the logging days that shaped the Skykomish River Valley -- from Frank Roesler's journey to spotted owls and the story of Joshua Randall.

You can experience for yourself the current chapter of this storied river valley this summer at the Sultan Shindig.