From what you describe, I would most likely study the top branching, pick out the one that looks the most vigorous (even if it is a little lower than the others) and help it become the eventual leader by pruning back the competitors.

Your new leader will straighten out and go vertical and in just a year or two it will look like the very natural leader.

Bald cypress is a superb tree.

to insure i dont cut off all the live ones .. in favor of the single dead one..

i wait until they bud out.. and then simply remove all duplicates ....

unless you can post a picture.. i dont know what more to tell you .. other than.. just do it ...

ken

Here is a link that might be useful: how to post pix

This should not be too difficult with Bald Cypress. It seems most of the trees I see are single leader.

Usually when I have notice this the tree seems to select the dominant leader itself. I'd recommend doing nothing and see what happens. You can always prune late in the fall if a dominant leader has not emerged by then. Of the thousands of these trees I've seen, I cannot recall seeing any large specimens that had multiple leaders.

i think your post..

inspired dax to take a close look at his.. and butcher them.. lol

check out the link ..

and have no fear like dax ...

ken

Here is a link that might be useful: link

I had the word butcher in my mind on my other post but somehow I managed to find another such as: prune!

Was thinking about this post when it came up cause I'd already done the work here. You beat me to the gun, Ken.

Dax