Photos
These pictures were taken in the spring of 2012, on a number of different contracts (I worked for four different companies in February, March, and April).
Boats near Courtenay.
Western/Red Cedar (Cw) tree branch.
A block. The snow line is just above us.
A Sitka Spruce (Ss) seedling.
Douglas Fir (Fdc) seedlings.
Seagulls and seals on a log jam.
FIST. It's a brand name for the truck canopy, not a planting company.
Random blocks.
A bald eagle outside my motel in Port Hardy.
A block. Spring is generally flat and creamy, but with bad weather. Fall will be better weather, but steeper.
First aid gear on the side of the canopy.
A block, early morning.
Cedar seedling by an old stump.
Sitka Spruce seedlings.
Port Hardy.
Sea Lions near Courtenay.
A random block map.
My waterproof day-bag.
Western Cedar seedlings.
A Scotter bird.
Hemlock tree.
Left to right, these are Douglas Fir, Sitka Spruce, and Western Cedar.
For the first six weeks that I was out there, I only saw about a dozen daylight hours where it wasn't raining or snowing.
An old-growth stump. This old tree was probably harvested eighty years ago, as the block was harvested for second-growth trees. At the time it was cut, it was probably between four and eight hundred years old. It may have been growing before Columbus arrived in North America.
The beach in Campbell River.
A little bit dirty at the end of a day of planting. But more wet than dirty - the constant rain keeps some of the mud off.
A cutblock in the morning.
My piece. A bit of slash, but nothing out of the ordinary for the coast. Actually, this piece was fairly easy.
Getting ready to bag up.
The foreman checking the back of the truck, in a light snow.
Not such a light snow - no work today. We got snowed out for almost three weeks straight at one point.
Some blocks.
A block in the morning. Again, planters need to get used to the slash.
One of our blocks. Light snow.
I was very glad, when the cards were cut in the morning, that I didn't end up with this piece. That's a bit of blowdown to climb over/under.
Hm. That looks like too much snow to work in.
An old block on the side of the highway, but they were logging behind the block, up the hill.
Western Hemlock (Hwc?) seedlings.
Another early-morning photo.
Oh, the slash. It never ends.
Hailstones. I guess it doesn't always rain or snow.
This was a particularly nasty day.
Port Hardy.
Some fresh green slash.
A block, somewhere outside of Campbell River.
Lots of colorful stuff in my day-bag.
Mike, riding shotgun.
From a bulletin board in a demonstration forest that we worked in for part of a day.
Random piece of flagging tape in the woods.
A package of cones. On some projects, we drive stakes into the ground beside the cedar seedlings, then strap cones over the seedlings, so the elk can't eat them. We saw elk on our blocks several times, looking for snacks.
Most of the trees in uncut forests are covered with assorted types of moss or lichens.
A couple piles of trees that I saw at one of the nurseries in Campbell River.
Another day, another block. This was the only rocky block that I remember of the entire spring. Well, except for a few that were cliffs of solid rock. But generally, coastal blocks have a lot of organics, even though you'd be pretty hard pressed to find actual mineral soil on some of them.
A stake and cone, covering a cedar seedling.
Andrew, taking a photo. Notice the use of the seat belt. At three of the four companies that I worked for this spring, everyone wore seatbelts, all the time, period. The planters at one company (except me) all ignored their seatbelts, which really surprised me. Not smart.
A block with lots of cedar cones.
A sign in the Stems research area.
Info board.
More cedar leaves.
More cedar cones.
Mike looks like he's ready for business.
One of our blocks.
Sean.
Another block. The blocks on the east/south side of Vancouver Island don't always seem to be quite as difficult as the blocks in some of the more remote areas. Sometimes, they're similar to challenging Interior blocks.
Campbell River.
Campbell River.
Campbell River.
Campbell River.
Stakes.
An old block that needed fill planting.
Another old block.
This way to the trail.
Six billion tree bumper sticker. BC must be getting close to seven billion next year.
Mosses and lichens everywhere.
More old trees.
Andrew, putting on his bama socks and boots.
A cache.
A block.
Driving around.
The view from my front window.
Start training them to plant early, I say.
Waiting for the water taxi.
The Salar.
An old skidder on Gilford Island.
Andrew, on the "Lasquetti Daughters" barge.
The generator room.
Scott Cove, Gilford Island.
Andrew, loading gear into the chopper.
One of my pieces on a heli-logged block. No road access.
Slides on the coast.
Another piece, this one was pretty easy.
On the barge.
Another block.
The shoreline, photographed from the barge.
Another block.
Andrew. Yes, that's water, despite the color. It's ok, it's been sterilized.
My piece was the slash. The green part below my piece was an old block, already planted.
You can use these lats & longs on Google Earth to see where I was planting in the previous photo.
Scott Cove. Gilford Island actually has a dozen or so buildings on it.
The Lasquetti Daughters, tied up in Scott Cove.
The kitchen.
Andrew & Ben.
Diesel storage.
Jordan helping another pair of planters to load up the helicopter.
This piece had a heli-pad built, so the chopper could actually land instead of just hover.
The foreman always gets to do the fun stuff. Jordan had to tie the boat up and swim to shore after dropping all the planters off on the shore, since the old dock had collapsed. The North Pacific water would have made for a rather refreshing swim at that time of year.
Some random building in a random cove.
Box fire.
Scenery.
Another block.
Jordan and Andrew.
A close-up of one of my pieces. This little piece was particularly ugly, especially in the slash pile in the lower half of the photo. Some of the openings in the slash were 12-14 feet deep, which I'd have to climb down into in order to plant one or two trees. For perspective, the grey stump on the side of the hill, just right of the center of the photo, is about five feet across.
Waiting for the boat.
Fuel/oil storage shed.
An old dory.
The dry room on the barge.
Loads of trees and gear, as we wait for the helicopter.
The Lasquetti Daughters, moored to shore.
That's a pretty nice little landing pad the loggers built for me.
Ben and Glen.
The first fifty feet going over the edge was a bit of a challenge.
Moored to the mainland.
A photograph taken from the barge.
Drums of something.
There's still a lot of snow in the mountains around us.
The Lasquetti Daughters, waiting to pick up our trucks after we finish planting.
Look closely at this photo: trees growing within an old stump.
The view from my piece. Not a bad office to work in.