A Chinook could lift a 16-footer…
A Verthol cannot!
A well-known helicopter logging company sent their Chinook away before they remembered that this huge sugar pine log needed to be removed from the streamcourse. I watched and took a series of photos documenting how this situation would pan out. While I was there, the Verthol couldn’t quite get one of those pieces into the air. They decided to try again in the morning, when they could get more lift.
Huge logs and logging debris in a stream channel! It was just “forgotten?” Why did that tree end up in the stream channel in the first place?
This pic and situation exactly illustrates why some folks are so rabidly anti-logging. I am sure that the logging plans explicitly directly that nothing like this would be allowed. But it happens, and it happens all the time. People are human and make mistakes in my experience, but too often the damage can’t be undone, although maybe not in this specific case. And I won’t even venture to ask why this large tree (old growth?) was cut in the first place.
This was from my Fire salvage project. The tree was reasonably dead (still had some green needles but, I wasn’t the one who marked it), and was felled sidehill. Maybe the faller should have felled it in a slightly different direction, as when the top logs were bucked, the bulk of the tree rolled and slid down into this intermittent creek. The need to remove the log was documented, and they had plenty of time to get the log out, while they still had the Chinook.
Despite this little glitch, I had generally good results from Columbia Helicopters. I was lucky to have a young, eager manager, willing to clean up the messes they made. They sure had to spend a lot of money doing their landing cleanup.
The massive sugar pine was “reasonably dead.” Gotta love it! I’m sure the tree made better lumber than habitat or soil anyway. And it likely put a large amount of cash into the pockets of the logging contractor.
Judging from the excess snags still contained within the project area, I’m “reasonably sure” that the tree would have been just another snag, if it hadn’t been cut. It sure didn’t put a lot of money into Columbia’s pockets, as it took at least three attempts to get the log out of the creek. I can’t say that the tree met the marking guidelines, since it was already on the ground when I took the sale over. I’m pretty sure it still had some green on it, though. Large sugar pines do make good “hard” snags. It was also close enough to a road to be considered a hazard tree. Despite salvage logging, there is still ample “habitat” in the form of snags.