Well I should certainly get some pictures going of this because its pretty cool IMHO. I work at a professional Ski Patroller at Crystal Mountain in WA state. I spend 5 days a week in the mountains on skis and often get tasked with lots of odd things to do around the mountain to keep our guests safe and happy. Well last season we had some record breaking avalanche slides which made quite a few new ski trails. One of those slid down from a place we call Niagras and came straight down 2000 feet of thick trees. You can see the new path just to the right of the red line in the picture, it used to be forested just as thick as the left part of the picture. Link below...
http://www.blogcrystal.com/2011/12/06/employee-housing-new-slide-path-old-ropeline/
Over the last few weeks we have been cleaning up some of that mess. Can you can imagine a few thousand trees sitting in a pile like god dropped his box of matches? Well in that mess is some really pretty cedar which has grown very slowly over the past 30 or 40 years and has yet to be more then 6 to 8 inches around. The elevation is between 5 and 6 thousand feet making the grain very tight and a really nice color.
It seemed a shame to just cut this stuff and chuck it down the mountain so I have been setting aside small piles of it and marking the pile so I could find it later. Slowly I have been skiing out small logs and bringing them home. Im hoping tomorrow I can start turning some bowls out of it and see if its really as nice as I think it could be. Ill post some pics of the slide path and the bowls I end up with as I have time. Sometimes this "work" really gets in the way of my turning...even if my work is skiing around all day.
Found one more blog post which shows some of the wood available.... http://www.blogcrystal.com/2012/01/04/the-new-employee-housing-run/
http://www.blogcrystal.com/2011/12/06/employee-housing-new-slide-path-old-ropeline/
Over the last few weeks we have been cleaning up some of that mess. Can you can imagine a few thousand trees sitting in a pile like god dropped his box of matches? Well in that mess is some really pretty cedar which has grown very slowly over the past 30 or 40 years and has yet to be more then 6 to 8 inches around. The elevation is between 5 and 6 thousand feet making the grain very tight and a really nice color.
It seemed a shame to just cut this stuff and chuck it down the mountain so I have been setting aside small piles of it and marking the pile so I could find it later. Slowly I have been skiing out small logs and bringing them home. Im hoping tomorrow I can start turning some bowls out of it and see if its really as nice as I think it could be. Ill post some pics of the slide path and the bowls I end up with as I have time. Sometimes this "work" really gets in the way of my turning...even if my work is skiing around all day.
Found one more blog post which shows some of the wood available.... http://www.blogcrystal.com/2012/01/04/the-new-employee-housing-run/
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