Logging The Hill Trees Damaged By Ice Storm Being Removed From Tubbs Hill
Forget hydroplane racing.
Drawing a crowd to downtown Coeur d’Alene is as simple as hooking a log to a helicopter and having the aircraft fly around Tubbs Hill.
At least that was the case Monday when hundreds of people gathered in the Third Street parking lot or pulled over on Front Avenue to take a gander at the action.
Roughly every three minutes, a red and white Bell 205 helicopter came around the south side of the hill with 150 feet of cable and a tree trailing below. The helicopter twisted, deftly dropped the tree into the lower Third Street parking lot and “whop, whop, whopped” away to thread the cable into the canopy and snag another load.
With the exception of a 20-minute maintenance break, the chopper kept up the pace for nearly 10 hours Monday.
Sawyers in orange hard hats scrambled around the parking lot, de-limbing the trunks and cutting the logs into lengths suitable for trucking. A backhoe with a giant steel pincers plucked the logs from the ground and put them on logging trucks.
During the next six days, weather permitting, Wescor Forest Products will pull about 1,200 trees off of Tubbs Hill that were damaged by the November ice storm. Tree cutting began March 3.
From the air Monday afternoon it appeared as if relatively few trees are being removed. Bystanders on the ground were impressed.
“It needs to be logged pretty severely,” said John Fish, a student at North Idaho College who bicycled over to watch. “The number of trees downed are a fire hazard. And whoever cruised it did an excellent job - they are leaving a lot of older, seed-bearing trees.”
Jenny Yeager agreed. “It needs to be done and it’s fun to watch.”
Wescor is flying the trees off the hill for Idaho Forest Industries. IFI will take the Douglas fir to its DeArmond Mill, near NIC. The pine will go to the Atlas mill, on Seltice Way, said Mike Welling, vice president of resources for IFI.
The limbs will be chipped and shipped to University of Idaho, where they will help fuel the heating plant.
Welling expects the city to receive between $15,000 and $20,000 for about 260,000 board feet of timber. “In a normal job, that would be between $60,000 and $70,000,” Welling said. “That’s the difference between regular logging and helicopter logging.”
But helicopters were the only feasible way to do the job, he said.
The Tubbs Hill Committee, which has worked for years to preserve the popular lakeside landmark, had effusive praise for IFI’s work Monday.
The city may decide to have more trees removed after the first 1,200 are hauled away if it appears necessary to quell the danger of fire and insect infestations, said Karen Hinson, city forester.
Meanwhile, she said she hopes people in nearby neighborhoods, including the Golf Course District and Indian Hills, will have their damaged trees removed to reduce the chance of an insect infestation.
“It’s not something you can decide to do in a few years,” she warned.
Everyone from the federal Bureau of Land Management to the state Parks Department seem to be taking the hint. Next Monday, choppers will begin pulling logs off of Mineral Ridge and Higgens Point.
The BLM is closing the popular Mineral Ridge hiking trail for about three weeks to remove about 160,000 board feet of timber. The agency had long planned to thin some overcrowded stands and pull out some trees infested with bark beetle. The ice storm pushed the project by destroying several additional trees.
It will take only a day, weather permitting, to pull the approximately 200 trees from Higgens Point. Ice storm damage, bugs, overcrowding and the exclusion of fire are driving the logging, said Randall Butt, who manages the area for the state.
The Forest Service also may get in on the ice-logging action. It is considering doing 200,000 board feet of salvage logging from about 50 acres around Carlin Bay.
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