Exploratory forestry in the Eastern Wedge

FORESTRY: 1.75 hours: 3:45 PM to 5:30 PM

Thinning and pruning with the hand saw in the south end of Eastern Wedge unit #5.

Forestry in Eastern Wedge unit #5: Thinning and pruning with the hand saws. Worked at the entrance to the unit from the path at the end of High Road in the SE corner of the property. Opened a hole in the “veil” of brushy hemlocks at the eastern edge of the clearcut. Massive amount of downed and leaning live and dead trees (16 year-old age class) made it extremely difficult to move around in this zone. Will need to return with the chainsaw to open it up and make the obvious removals of damaged vertical trees before further pruning. It was near dark and hard to see if the trees I was pruning were worth saving. Thickets of large salmonberry dominate and obstruct the understory, but they are at the “decrepit brush” stage, so I will cut them down and they will probably not regenerate in the darkness. Found an occasional viable Doug fir among the predominant hemlocks (along with what appear to be “dead stick” saplings), indicating that this is a Doug fir plantation “gone bad”. Still, there are enough well-formed hemlocks and alders present to make this a productive stand with a little thinning now.