The Salmon Lakes Trail was going to be an easy logout, a vacation compared to the prior week’s 13.2 mile trek through the Three Sisters Wilderness. I had scouted the trail 4 days earlier and had found 6 logs starting two miles east of the trailhead, inside the Waldo Lake Wilderness, which surrounds Waldo Lake on three sides, but does not include the lake itself. Once those logs were removed, I would hike about a half mile further to Upper Salmon Lake checking for logs. I doubted there would be many there. It is fairly open on that stretch and the last few years has had few obstructions.
Half of the group would then head north up Waldo Meadows Trail where I had found another half dozen logs within a half mile, before being turned back by snow. It was warmer, and there had been rain, so it was possible that enough snow had melted that perhaps the group could reach the junction with Waldo Mountain Trail a mile from the meadow and hike that back to the trailhead, logging it out and finishing the loop. In any case, it had all the makings of a straightforward day.
Two miles in, I took care of two smaller logs myself, moving both of them, helped cut out a third, and we all regrouped at Waldo Meadows, which was entirely visible, the snow’s having left probably not more than a week or two earlier. In summer, the plants are so high, one can hide in it. Indeed, 4 years prior, almost to the day, was the first time I saw the meadow, and I could barely find the trail. I thought that was the default view of the meadow, but the grasses and flowers are all annuals, and in early season it looks bare.
I headed to Salmon Lakes while three others in the crew with me took care of a log. The trail as expected was clear, the outflow of Upper Salmon Lake, which becomes a major tributary of the Middle Fork of the Willamette River in Oakridge, was flowing well. A patch of snow was near the lake, presumably in a shady spot or other cool microclimate.
When I returned to the meadow, the log had been cleared, and I radioed the crew leader, who was above me on the Waldo Meadows Trail heading away. I told him we would continue logging out the trail another mile or so, heading towards Chetco Lake 2 additional miles east, before turning around. Before reaching Chetco, another trail turns northward and then west, climbing Waldo Mountain, 1000 feet above us, which now was still covered in snow and inaccessible, before descending to the junction to which other crew was heading. The full loop is about 9 miles, with 1700 feet of climbing, but the views from Waldo Mountain are spectacular.
I put my pack on and started walking east through Waldo Meadows, the trail climbing slightly through grass, thinking that few trees are out here that are going to fall on the trail, so I will get some free mileage without logs.
I was so wrong.
A 250-300 year old hemlock, part of a small island of a few trees in the meadow, had fallen smack across the trail, and its 47 inch diameter size gave new meaning to DBH (diameter at breast height). The downed log literally came up to my chest. I cleared a few branches while waiting for the rest to arrive.
After some soul searching and group discussion, we decided to remove the log. Making a bypass of the log in a trail in a somewhat fragile meadow is not something we want to do. We started one cut on the main log and a trimming cut on the end closer to the stump, where it had fractured.
I’ve worked on several project logs, where most of the day is spent in one area sawing or digging. One was on the Vivian Lake trail where a tree had come down on an angle and had end bind, where the weight of the tree compressed the entire log that was lower. If one removed a wedge, it was possible to see the kerf, or the saw cut, slowly close. End binds have no easy way to cut. Last year, we had another end bind in a 30 inch log on Black Creek. We finally had to saw parallel kerfs a few inches apart and then with a Pulaski knock out the chunk of wood in between. That means cutting an inch, maybe a little more, twice, chunking out the wood with a Pulaski, and continuing inch by inch through the diameter. This log took 5 hours to remove.
Two years ago, on Shale Ridge, in the same wilderness northwest of where we were, where I had just been certified, another log also had a bind problem, and one person spent 5 hours chunking it out while the rest of us logged out 3 miles of trail. We cut a small notch in the log for people could pass, but this was not adequate for horses, and a year later the job was to open up the trail fully. Seven of us worked together and cut a larger passage through. It turns out a huge branch which we couldn’t see had pushed straight into the ground, and only with a pry log, a lot of digging, and a great deal of time, we finally succeeded in pulling it out, which was essential to remove the round, or the cut piece. I saw the branch on my B-cert trip and had forgotten how large it was, the size of a moderate tree, explaining why it took so much effort to remove the log. We have joked that we wanted to move the wilderness boundary sign past a problem log.
Our current VLL (very large log) was able to be cut to ground level. Below that, however, we had to dig the dirt out and use care that the teeth of the crosscut not get into the dirt, which is damaging. Dirt isn’t good for small hand saws, either, but they are more easily replaced. We would dig out, saw, and finally use a KatanaBoy to finish the cut, which we did on the first cut after 3 hours and an hour later for the second cut, much of which was fortunately through a rotten area of the log.
Moving the round, once it was cut, was another matter. We had to break it out of the ground and try to make the path to the side of the trail more gravity friendly. That took 3 people on as many PLTs (precision leveraging tools which were long logs used as lever), and all four of us pushing our legs, digging out blocking soil underneath, until at long last nearly 100 cubic feet of wood started to move.
At least once it began to roll, it moved just off the trail and stopped. Had it stopped in the middle of the trail, I think we all would have cried.
Boreal B[l]og 
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