The Cameron Tract Twilight Tour

The first twilight tour in several years on the Cameron Tract took place last Wednesday, August 28^th. The goal of the tour was to highlight the currently active utility pole sale and provide an outreach opportunity to the Oregon Small Woodlands Association and to the neighbors living adjacent to the tract. Leading the tour were Steve Pilkerton, an engineer with the College Forests and Brad Withrow-Robinson who works for OSU Extension Services. Also on hand to speak and answer questions were Bo and Bobby of Cross and Crown logging who have been responsible for the felling of the trees as well as Nels Jensen and Todd Merritt of Pacific Enterprises who are the pole buyers and markers. In case you missed out, Steve started out by giving a brief history of the Cameron Tract and spoke about what the College Forests is hoping to accomplish with the pole sale.  A pole sale has been considered for this stand of timber in the Cameron for several years, but only recently has the pole market been lucrative enough to make this a worthwhile venture. Even so, the stand is still being thinned very lightly (about 8-10 poles per acre) and does have the potential to be re-thinned in the future. According to Steve, a high quality Douglas Fir tree pole has a life expectancy of 60 years. The cost to harvest and treat a wooden pole is much cheaper than manufacturing a pole from a man-made material. 

Steve Pilkerton giving a quick history lesson

Currently, the fallers have fell 53 poles at an average length of 90 feet and an average diameter of 19.7 inches. The Nels and Todd talked about what they look for when selecting a pole (see my blog post below about marking the pole sale). Some of the trees in the Cameron are tall enough to yield either two poles or a pole and a saw log. When the pole buyers mark the poles, there is a certain margin of error as there may be defect in the top of the tree that isn’t visible from the ground, such as knots. The trees could also suffer some damage when they hit the ground. So far, about 80% of the trees that were marked and fallen as poles are meet the pole criteria. The rest will be sold as saw logs. A high quality pole can sell for up to double the price of a saw log. On the flip side, the cost of hauling a pole is also almost double.

Pole buyer Nels Jensen  of Pacific Enterprises explaining how the poles were marked and selected

 Some of the Cameron residents had questions about the hauling of the Cameron Pole logs. Unfortunately, a timeline for trucking the logs out of the Cameron and down the haul route towards highway 99 is still TBD. When hauling does begin, there will only be 1-2 truck loads a day coming out, which will have both a lead and tail truck to help mitigate safety for the long load on the curvy roads. The group also viewed the road construction including a large culvert replacement to accommodate the track traffic hauling both equipment and the long harvested poles.

Combined, about 20 members of OSWA and Cameron Tract neighbors attended. The great turn out shows how important demonstration forests like these can be for educating small scale forest owners about potential management options for their own land emphasizing forest health, revenue and aesthetics.