SULTAN – A game of pickup sticks is being played on the grandest of scales in the hills of above Sultan.
But instead of children trying to avoid toppling a pile of toys, these players are grown-up loggers charged with the dangerous task of removing thousands of trees felled by a windstorm last winter.
If they don’t move quickly, the trees could become a fire hazard or start to rot. The loggers will remove enough trees to build about 600 homes, and the money will support the state’s public school system.
Jumbled, broken and crisscrossed, the forest looks as if Mother Nature spilled a giant box of toothpicks. The logs are difficult to tug out of the tangle because of their weight; they’re capable of lashing out or shifting when cut.
“What happens when all of those trees are laid down and crisscrossed, they’re under a lot of pressure,” said Bill Foulds, general manager of Nielsen Brothers Inc., the Bellingham logging outfit that has the contract for the 195-acre site. “It’s dangerous work.”
Still, Foulds said his company was happy to be hired by Forks-based Rayonier Forest Operations, which is paying the state Department of Natural Resources $2 million to log what’s called the Rumbleseat blowdown. Rayonier subcontracted the actual logging to Nielsen Brothers.
Because of the danger involved in a salvage sale, Neilsen’s company recently bought a new piece of machinery that allows its workers to safely cut, remove and stack the downed trees.
Called a felling head, the tool attaches to a log loader, which is normally used to stack trees onto logging trucks. An operator uses the felling head to grab and hold a log while an attached chain saw cuts it free. The $375,000 piece of equipment absorbs any pressure that’s released.
As a bonus, the log loader is equipped with “high-walker” capabilities, which allow it to walk over stumps and the tumble of trees at the blow-down.
“We do a lot of these salvage projects, so it just seemed to make sense to give it a try,” Foulds said, adding that it’s a tossup as to whether the new tool is saving the company any money. But “it greatly increases the safety of our employees.”
Other pieces of equipment being used include a feller buncher, which cuts trees and stacks them. A device called a processor then grabs the logs, slices off the ends, skins off some bark, cuts them into lengths that sawmills require, and stacks them based on length, grade and their destination.
In locations where logging equipment is not allowed or is unable to reach, a swing yarder is used to drag trees to a location where they can be trimmed for shipment. The tower, staked with supporting cables, lifts the front of a clump of logs – usually two or three – then drags them to the processor.
In one of the last jobs not done by a machine, loggers known as chokers tie a cable around the trees and then whistle at the swing-yarder operator to let him know it’s time to drag the logs out. The job is one of the most dangerous in the industry and is where many rookie loggers get their start.
“Our equipment is state of the art,” said Les Allen, one of the owners of Allen Brothers Forest Management in Arlington, a timber company hired to do some of the logging at the Rumbleseat blowdown. “Everything is electronic. These younger guys get into it like it’s your laptop.”
The January storm – the same one that knocked out electricity to 70,000 Snohomish County homes – also knocked down another 92 acres of trees a few miles from the Rumbleseat site. DNR is preparing to auction off that timber next month.
Reporter Lukas Velush: 425-339-3449 or lvelush@ heraldnet.com.
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