David Lesher wrote:

So a friend in NorCal has firewood, a place to keep it, & woodstoves.

But the route from B to C is circuitous.
If he could lift it say 14' to the balcony....

My initial idea is a vertical steel {flag}pole, set in
concrete. Say 1.5" dia. pipe. Around it slides a larger
diameter cylinder; it slides up and down. A scuttle, a open U
shape, is welded to the slider.

{shown tipped 90 so I can use more ASCII chars...}
___
/(fw)
|(fw)
|================= {pipe}
|(fw)
\___

My first thought for lifting it was a winch at the base, with
a pulley at the top; the cable goes up the center and over the
pulley; al-la a sailboat mainsail sheet.

But then I thought of garage door openers. One scheme has a long
lead screw and a traveler that is threaded to match. If you took one
and put the motor end at the top; it could pull the scuttle up.

Plus openers have overload clutches and reversing built in...

To slow it down, however, we'd need a long screw of finer thread,
and hopefully Acme not NF. Not sure how to do that....we'd
have to butt 2+ shorter rods together, weld, yet get the threads
contiguous...

Comments from the RCM brane trust?

How about a simple lift cradle running on an inclined track (think
ladder) using a small electric winch and setup to dump the load into a
catch bin at the top of the lift? Toss logs into the cradle at the
bottom and when full push the up button.