Deep in the woods of the Pacific Northwest, rugged men make their living doing one of the most dangerous jobs in history. Logging. Their mission: to retrieve timber perched on mountainsides too steep to access with machines. But this is no easy task.
For more than a hundred years, larger than life characters, many of whom are members of logging families that go back to the time when the West was being settled - have spent their days among towering trees and powerful machines and their nights in outposts far from the comforts of civilization. Ax Men tells remarkable stories detailing the history of the logging industry, showing how technology has transformed life for today's logger, while the struggle of man versus nature stays the same.
Ax Men follows four logging crews through the logging season in the remote forests of northwest Oregon. Plagued by mechanical failures, relentless weather-including a hurricane that ripped through the area- and violent and unpredictable terrain, these brave men risk their lives retrieving the very timber we depend upon to build our country. Snapped cables, runaway logs and treacherous machinery are among the many dangers that threaten the lives and safety everyday. Anything and everything can go wrong on these sites and the price of even the simplest mistake can mean death.
On the heels of the success of Discover Channel's Deadliest Catch, The History Channel last year successfully premiered Ice Road Truckers. Now from the same team that brought that show to life comes Ax Men, which is about the logging industry. Like crab fishing, lumberjacking is one of the most dangerous jobs in the United States today with death or crippling injury always lurking. Ax Men follows a now-familiar forumla of following a handful of both big and small operations (in this case, logging crews) as they struggle through a season, battling weather, mechanical breakdowns and the personal tensions that such high stress work inevitablly triggers.
We've had a chance to watch the first episode, which turned out to be uncensored as we jarringly found out only a few minutes into the episode. A large part of the episode had to be spent explaning the ins and outs of the logging industry, establishing each crew's current logging operation along with the tools they use (one uses an old tank) and of course the colorful personalities populating the crews. It was also established that at least one of the operations is small enough that it can't absorb too many losses, while another was described as a multi-million dollar "well-oiled" machine.
To "spice" the first episode up a bit, we're treated to a couple examples of the trials of logging. One demonstrated one of the many dangers of logging while the other led to a profanity-laced temper tantrum that we could have done without. However, such tirades have become another signature element of this brand of "reality" show. Otherwise, the episode is often slowed down by a large amount of necessary exposition. We did see enough to pique our interest that we'll tune in again to see what direction the series takes before we ultimately decide whether it's a "keeper."
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