[philfort]

[treeswarper]

And, "literally" nothing will be left behind is not correct either. You don't know until it is over. A lot of you call units clear cuts and scorched earth when they are not. If you walk through, you will find leave trees, sometimes clumps of trees left, wildlife trees, etc. The units are required to be reforested and meet stocking/survival requirements. That's hardly what I'd call scorched earth. Had you thought it out a bit, I'm sure many folks still believe that all units are broadcast burned after logging in this day and age. So much of what people think they know about forestry just isn't current. And we did burn units in order to get rid of all the slash from logging the old growth. Sometimes it was 6 feet deep and you can't plant seedlings in that slash. Until we all stop using lumber, we need to keep cutting trees. That's a fact of life and you should want it to be done in your "backyard" because of the rules we have here. Meanwhile the smoke blows in and out from the real scorching.

[Malachai Constant]

I doubt that they are really logging it for timber. Most of the trees are only about 20 years old at the most. Summits of WT3 and Wt2 were bare back in the day. There is no road to WT3. When they cut WT1 most of the trees were left. They replanted WWT1 with nobles maybe a inconvenient Xmass tree farm🤪. I suppose you could cut it for biomass but it seems uneconomic. All by the summits are on a considerable slope. Weyerhaeuser certainly has a lot of places that are more profitable to log.

[cascadeclimber]

[Randito]

[cascadeclimber]

[Malachai Constant]

To me the model appears o be what happened east of WT1. There the top was clearcut and 100’ vertical down the north side. Southerly winds took out everything a mother 100’ down. The bootleg/Preston trail was obliterated for another year or so. If this happens to WT2 and 3 it will be an eyesore for the rest of my life.

[Randito]

Logging underway on South Tiger

[philfort]

These show up really well on recent satellite photos on sentinel-hub.com. Looks like they've started clearing a few small strips on West Tiger too.

[puzzlr]

I don't see the new cuts on West Tiger on sentinel-hub, but maybe I'm looking at the wrong images. cascadeclimber, I don't get your gripe about work done at Poo Poo point. It seems you're mostly disturbed by a double standard. But as far as clearing goes, Poo Poo point is a drop in the bucket relative what happened on the south side of the ridge in 2018.

[Pyrites]

Outside my hiking area. Does this include area being talked about in the thread? https://investor.weyerhaeuser.com/2021-08-16-Weyerhaeuser-to-Open-West-Tiger-Mountain-Ownership-for-Permanent-Public-Access

[Malachai Constant]

The West Tiger Autumn Show has begun. We went upHighpoint to TMT on West Tiger RR Grade to junction with K3 and back to Highpoint. We could hear heavy equipment in vicinity’s of WT2&3 summits. Sounded like road building no felling or yarding yet. Stopped at closed trail barriers, we are not nuts. So it goes.

[cascadeclimber]

The tops of WT1-3, the path between them, and down slope to the south has all been razed to the ground. A road has been cut between them. Some of this is visible from I-90 elsewhere. If Weyerhauser was really walking their BS talk they'd have selectively thinned and left immature trees instead of hacking everything down into slash piles. The trees near the top of WT3 and down into the saddle between it and WT2 were small- hardly valuable timber. And yes, my upset about Poo Poo (and elsewhere in west slope 2nd and 3rd growth forest) is the wild double-standard. A short, steep trail eroded six inches is worthy of fences and signs about protecting the environment and cutting down live trees to throw across it. But immediately adjacent they clear cut tens of acres, then run a brush hog over the vegetation holding the slope in place. I don't see how it has anything to do with "protecting the environment". It's more about protecting a narrow opinion about what constitutes a 'good' trail.

[Malachai Constant]

Confirmed, bare slope well down south slope they left half a dozen trees on the ridge either for later yarding or something sure they will blow down with first winter storm with south wind.

[cascadeclimber]

Yeah, again, I feel differently about alpine zones, but this is third (now fourth) growth west-slope stuff where any trail not trod on daily returns to near-undisturbed in a matter of years. Meanwhile, the carnage at the top of Tiger will not look like it did three months ago for the remainder of my lifetime. But yeah, the trail is the problem? It's insane. I fear this will now become like the Chirico trail to Poo Poo (which I have entirely given up on) replete with onerous throngs of humans, parking problems, noise, garbage, etc. To the east, toward WT2

To south/southwest. you can't tell from this photo, but the soil is all tilled up and will wash downslope this winter.

And an old trail section that was deemed harmful to the environment and 'closed' using various means.