The trees I saw

[Quebecnewf]

Well guys I am sorry but this post has no pics.

About a week ago my wife and I went east of where we live approx 300 klm  by snowmobile to visit her sister and her husband at there winter cabin.

This cabin is located on a small river. We took the snowmobiles and drove 50 klm. Up the frozen river on a scouting trip and winter picnic.

Now I had been up this river before and had looked a bit at the timber but this time I took a better  look.
It just blows me away to see the size of the spruce and balsam fir on this river. There are spruce there that three men joining there arms cannot encircle and these trees are 100 ft tall. The balsam fir are smaller but just as tall.
This is all old growth never been logged timber.

I then come back home and go back logging in our woods and realize just how much smaller and shorter our trees are compared to theirs .

Now if I could just come up with a method to get some of those logs on my sawmill.

Quebecnewf

[thecfarm]

Wiil they reach the river? Float them down stream.  :D

[Quebecnewf]

Thought of that. River too shallow and rocky by far . River is also a salmon river so logs in the river is not an option. I wonder what completely knot free slow growth ( unbelievable tight growth rings) spruce would be worth. In our area with the cold long winters these trees are very old and very high quality timber.
I see them doing heli logging on the west coast so I,m thinking why not here. Just take so many of the very best trees. No roads , no damage to other trees.
I wonder if a helicopter could lift some of these trees?

Quebecnewf

[Ocklawahaboy]

The hellicopter logging I see them do on the west coast of Canada (on TV) is worse than truck logging in my book.  They cut the "little" threes that I would die for, in order to have a clean spot to drop the big one.  Once they drop it, the chopper gets one or two big logs and all the "little" 1 meter diameter stuff gets left. 

[Peter Drouin]

The trees have a job already, To keep the water clean. ;)

[landscraper]

Well guys I am sorry but this post has no pics.

About a week ago my wife and I went east of where we live approx 300 klm  by snowmobile to visit her sister and her husband at there winter cabin.

This cabin is located on a small river. We took the snowmobiles and drove 50 klm.

I've never been on a snowmobile in my life so please pardon my ignorance, but do you have to carry extra gas to go 300km?  That's 180 miles or so right?  How long does that take - I imagine you can't go full throttle for hours on end because of terrain, or can you?  I sold an ATV one time with a couple hundred miles on the odometer and it took me 2 years to drive that much.  That sounds like a fun trip.

[Magicman]

I have been wondering how your logging was going this year.

[Quebecnewf]

Our logging has been going good. We have 400 logs so far this winter. That's pretty good for us. Fairly good logs for this area. Nothing like the timber I saw on my trip up the Napatipi River of course. I don,t think you could handle some of those spruce. What would you do with a log say 30" at the top 12 ft long and you are working with snowshoes in deep snow. Lots of them would be too heavy for a snowmobile to move even on a good hard packed trail.


The trip down requires gassing in a village along the way. With the large tank on my snowmobile I might make in one shot without gassing but it would be a close thing.

When I speak of heli logging I was thinking of the method where they climb and top the tree. They then saw it almost off and the chopper comes in and grabs it by the flagged top , finishes breaking it of a flies it out.

I am not going to try and learn how to top a tree. Too old and too slow for that.
Would be fun if you were younger
Quebecnewf

[47sawdust]

Quebecnewf,
I spent some time on a google search of the Napetipi area.It is very beautiful and very remote.I can see why you would be intrigued with that area.Must be some fantastic fishing and very large black flies and mosquitoes.