Scenery Pictures 
The site we're working on right now is called Bitterroot View. It has a beautiful view of Bitterroot Lake. Many mornings there is fog covering the lake that eventually burns away (when it's a nice day). Yesterday morning there was about an inch of snow on the ground, but that melted by lunch time.
This week has been easy for me. I've been keeping up and even though there was a problem with the delimber that Pat and I had to fix for about an hour, I still mostly caught up in the hour before quiting time. Joe has been home all week working on his project and doing some Rangenet work. He'll probably come to work next week to help us move to the second part of the job we're on.

-Miranda


Joe, Tom, and Jesse eating lunch by the yarder and a fire that Joe built.

Bitterroot Lake.

Look at the cool cloud inversion.

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This Week 
Well, I've basically been keeping up. I stayed late one day last week, but Pat has to load trucks early in the morning so he has time to work on my piles of logs before we (the crew) get there. This week has been going fairly well. I keep learning new things and how best to deal with other things.
-Miranda

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First Day Alone 
I had my first day working alone without the retired delimber operator there to help me with problems or to catch up when there's a big pile of logs. It went really well. I stayed caught up and I didn't have too many problems. The hardest thing to tell sometimes is if a log is rotten and how much is too much. I think I may have kept up though because they were going a little slow. Tomorrow will be the big test. We're doing clipper piles which basically means they send up a group of trees at once and there isn't normally much time between because the piles are fairly easy to get to.
-Miranda

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Long Weekend Off 
Well, we finished the job we were at for the last month. On Thursday and on Friday we moved most of the equipment and all of camp (the trailers) out. We had to walk the heavy machinery out to a gate which took about 1.5 hours where it is picked up and driven to our next job. So, we get Monday off while Pat sees about our next location. I'm getting better at running the delimber (picture below) but we'll see how much longer Joe lasts hooking. :)
-Miranda


One of many nice views from our job (6000 feet).

Sunrise one of the many early mornings.

From left to right: the loader, delimber and yarder

The bathroom facilities at camp. :)


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Near Death Experiences 
Well, we're off to bed at 8pm to try to sleep prior to 4am wakeup. Another week of incommunicado out in the boonies. After this week, we may be done "camping" so we'd be back every night, OR we may go even further down the same road and camp for another 4 weeks!! (I hope not, It's getting cold).

The middle of last week was exciting. Pat and I were down hooking on a Super-sloped Corridor 45degrees+ . A huge limbless log 300 feet up was lost out of the grapple... All we heard was a huge "whoosing" sound, and could see debri flying up the hill directly above us. Pat freaked out, which really freaked me out.. We had to just sit still and determine to which side of us this bullet train was going to go.. At about 50 feet away It looked 10feet to my left, So I bolted to the right as fast as i could... "Whooooosh" it carreened by... I was pretty freaked out, But I guess something like that rarely happens, maybe just once/year... so i was just lucky to see one so soon :)

Also have to listen for boulders bouncing down the Corridors... Feels like Freaking Donkey-Kong Down there :)

Off to try another week!
-joe

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