Trees, trees, and more trees

So this is why Forestry is the best job in the world. Check out that view. I mean the view of Mount Washington in the background, all covered with snow.

This week has been jam packed with our vocational days. The photo above was taken at one of Green Diamond's properties near Shelton. We were able to interact with planting, cable yarding, and road construction operations, and yes, the weather was very kind to us.

As you can see, tree planters have it pretty tough in this part of the world. It's steep, there is no ground prep, and there's certainly no mounds or straight lines to follow, in fact neither of us could figure out the system they had for planting the trees in 9ft x 9ft spacings.
While in Aberdeen, a visit to Sierra Pacific Industries was arranged. Our first Saw Mill. This mill takes in approximately 1.2million m3 a year, and processes Hemlock and Doug Fir. The photo on the left shows their scaling operation at work. It was interesting to compare the log delivery points, processing technology and the CoGen plant, with the mills back home. The CoGen plant allows the mill to burn forest and mill waste, to not only create steam to run through the dry kilns, but also to generate electricity through turbines to run the entire mill, and sell excess megawatts to power companies. Overall, we were all very impressed with the capabilities of the mill, and were amazed by the scale at which they operate. Just check out the crane that unloads the truck in one grab, and how about the size of that log pile, it just won't quite fit in the photo. Fortunately SPI are able to keep operating this mill during the tough times the industry is facing over here, and we certainly hope that they, and the rest of the Forestry and associated industries can bounce back to full production in the near future.