Navarro Redwood Again

[gf beranek]

For the last 7 days I've been hiking in Navarro Redwoods photographing the champion trees there, and their stumps. It's all 140 year old second growth. Trees up to 7 foot diameter and 200 feet tall. Not too shabby for second-growth, and not at all uncommon for river flat redwoods to achieve in such a short amount of time.

Terri and I started doing this a few years ago actually. Now with better cameras and equipment we can go hog wild.

There's 11 miles of flats to hike. Some are narrow, and others are quite wide. It can take days cataloging all
the trees on a single flat. It's been a fun way to pass time the last couple of weeks. I could spend the rest of the year covering it all.

The Google images are of the first flat you come up to from the beach. It's about a thousand feet wide by 1.3 miles long. I'm listing all the flats, and named groves within them, by the highway mile post markers. Maybe this time next year I'll have it all mapped out with GPS.

Now, I do not know how the images are going to arrange. It always seems a crap shoot.

 

[MasterBlaster]

Excellent! So, I guess the 'rocks in your shoe' feeling has gone away?

 

[gf beranek]

Nope. That condition has not improved one bit. I live it.

 

[MasterBlaster]

Yea, I still have the electric worms. The VA gives me Gabapentin, it knocks about 50% of the sensations.

 

[woodworkingboy]

I remember tearing down an old house in Watsonville, on the north coast of California. Inside the walls was Redwood framing, beautiful clear wood that shone brightly when planed. I assume it was from virgin growth. Just a part of where all that wood went. I imagine gorgeous huge planks ripped into studding.

 

[rskybiz]

I look forward to one day seeing these beauties, even in photos they are a sight to see! I can only imagine the real life experience!
Thanks and keep up your good works!
Joel

 

[Bermy]

Cut down stump on right, regrowth on left, wow, that's really good to see.

 

[BOTS]

GFB, good pics...I was there a few months ago, staying at my wifes aunts home in ELK....Navarro has some nice trees and the river

 

[gf beranek]

There's so much to see in Navarro. Next time you're in the area give a call. Maybe we can hook one together.

 

[cory]

Gerr, those tall stumps, was it really easier to cut them that height instead of say, at waist level?

 

[MasterBlaster]

I'd like to know how they finished the backcut. Did they jump off the springboards, 15 feet off the ground?

 

[Husabud]

How deep does the snow get there? That would be my thought on the high stumps.

 

[gf beranek]

There were many reasons for having to make high stumps, and snow was never one of them.

Number one on the list is: The butt of old growth trees often have gross defects that the mills did not want. Fire scars, goose pens, bunions. Above defects, in good sound wood, more options and implementation for directional felling became possible. Get above the defect!!

Number two: Get out of the butt swell of the tree, above the taper, where trunk diameter is uniform. Straight logs is what the mills wanted. Not tapered logs. As for the faller, getting above the butt swell, a lot less chopping is involved getting the trees on the ground.

Number three: Logs off the butt are often heavier than water, and rather than float down the river to the mills they sank instead. Get above the butt!

Number four: Co-dominant trees, double and triples, had to be boarded up past the unions, way up sometimes, so the old timers could get their cross-cut saws in between the trunks. And yes, they rode it out many a time. Incidentally, a lot of the old growth trees the old timers left were co-dominants. You have to take into mind the the old timers had not the ability to bore. Unlike what the modern chainsaw can do, and in the latter years the chainsaw opened a whole new realm of possibilities for falling trees.

Number five: Some old timers, like so many people today, were showoffs, and they did things just to get others peoples attention, or win a bet, or make a statement. There are stumps and trees out in the woods today that will make you scratch your head in pure wonder trying to figure out what the old timers were thinking when they did what they did.

I hope that helps answer your questions.

 

[MasterBlaster]

So, by "rode it out," you mean they stayed on the springboards as the tree went over?

 

[gf beranek]

Some had to, Butch. Kind of like being up the Rockport tree. Now that one really rocked!

 

[stig]

Talk about setting a tall stump

 

[gf beranek]

Ha!

 

[cory]

Great explanation, Jerr. And leave it to you to put out that final reason, you always like to highlight human nature as it figures into tree work.

So I guess popping in a few springboard notches and then working 15' off the ground was just a piece of cake for those guys

 

[gf beranek]

It was a daily routine for the old timers. Though I'd bet from many a climber I have known some of the old timers were less comfortable with their job that others.

I knew a fellow tree guy that run an add in the phone book and the local newspaper, and it read: "Ron's Tree Service, 40 feet and under." The guy knew his limitations.

 

[woodworkingboy]

Chainsaws must have given fallers a slightly different sense of mortality.

 

[gf beranek]

A cross-cut saw and axe could cut you to the bone just as fast. Such wounds were much cleaner and easier for the body to heal. A chainsaw takes out chunks.

 

[MasterBlaster]

It rips as opposed to slicing.

 

[cory]

Did guys get cut much back in the day? Maybe from slipping and falling onto a saw or axe? I've gotten a bad cut from a non running chainsaw.

 

[BOTS]

There's so much to see in Navarro. Next time you're in the area give a call. Maybe we can hook one together.

GFB, would love to do that, sounds like a lot of fun!

Have you been to that sink hole back behind the grave yard a bit north of Navarro? not sure if grave yard in Navarro or closer to Mendicino, but fun to see, you have to hold on to a rope to get down and back out of sink hole...

 

[woodworkingboy]

I know that in some types of construction in the old days, they pretty much expected people to get hurt or die. Building dams and such in difficult areas....and one particular dam with lots of underground water comes to mind. They might leave a bronze plaque in memory. Now there is a safety flag flying over the job site, injuries and worse are considered much more unacceptable ramifications.