Logging

Start of the log deck

An inviting path through the lodge pole and aspen

I was trying to fill a logging permit this morning so we went straight to work today, no time for morning recreation.  I had a large crew on staff today with my brother, niece and nephew.  We went up to Kelly Park and began logging beetle kill trees.  The last set of humans who logged the area were not very fastidious.  They cut down live trees, crushed live trees with inaccurate felling techniques, left whole logs and 4 foot tall stumps, and improperly drove through clearly marked non-motorized areas.  We only felled 7 trees, since most of what we harvested was cleaned from what they had dropped.  After the safety briefing, we each fell into natural roles in the team:

• Me: Log selection, felling, bucking, pulling logs to deck
• Patrick: Managing inventory, measuring and marking logs to length, pulling logs to deck
• Lil: Measuring and marking logs to length, trimming large branches
• Kian: Cutting off small branches with a hatchet, cutting small dead trees with a hatchet for future furniture projects

The quote I got from the local timber place was $1200-$1400 and they didn't even have all the logs in our manifest.  It ended up considerably cheaper to cut our own.

Patrick down in a boulder field taking some pictures of his own

Kian is ready to find some gold

Lil is ready to mine some gold

More lichenous boulders and a keyhole

I recalled an old gold mine about a mile off, so we took a break and hiked over and up to it.  The hike was through pretty steep and difficult terrain, but the whole group did great.  There were many large granite boulders next to us.  Kian does a lot of mining in video games but this was his first trip to a real one.

LOGZ!!!!!!

Lil filled out and posted our Forest Service permit to get us legal.  We loaded up all our posts and poles and drove back down to the house.


Patrick unloading a 20 footer like a boss

I have been dreading moving logs to the job site since I started this project.  TomTom has a set of pallet forks which would be ideal for the job.  Unfortunately, there is no way to get TomTom back to the job site without incurring a lot of damage to the existing landscape.  This means I had to move the logs solo one at a time out to the site by hand while Lil was working on a small unrelated carpentry project and Patrick and Kian were digging footers.  I got 16 logs out to the site with about 8 left to do.  I will likely need Patrick's help to move the largest and greenest of the logs tomorrow.