Throw Back Thursday - Thinning, Piling & Crushing the Colpitts Way

Found some ancient pictures of our life in Oregon before Wyoming.  We contracted for the Forest Service doing fire suppression piling, thinning and crushing on the Wallowa-Whitman, Malheur & Umatilla National Forests.  We married in June 1972 and we purchased our first cat - a D6-9U in December of that year and began contracting the spring of 1973.   We contracted brush piling on  timber sales, crushed thinning slash, thinning, and finally simply running over old slash pulling a "sheep's foot" behind us.  We added another cat and until we hired another hand we had His and Her Cats.  We moved camp often as we had to provide fire watch "10 pm or 3 hours after the equipment is shut down, whichever is later".  So moving camp to the equipment on the units let us be at home while complying with our contracts.

This picture is our green pkup, Mom and Dad's Green/White trailer, Dad Brown pkup and the first cat. Okay so this must have been in 1974ish Ken's as head is shaved and he did that in the winter of 1972.  :)

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Dad would come out whenever he could and helped do whatever needed done.  We obviously were taking a break from piling here.

Cousin Wes worked for us a couple of summers when we had a few thinning/bucking contracts........
He bought a Stihl 045 in about 1973/4ish for around $250-300.  He sold that saw a few weeks ago for $300 and the guy was happy to pay it.  Wes is still doing thinning - when HE wants to and around his place at Elk Hollar.

I was the mechanics' helper and gofer.  Here I'm help him get ready to weld the sheet of iron onto the cframe on the Cat.

And here it is all done and working.






















Pappy (Ken's Dad)  began using a front end crushed first.  Here is his first one all painted and ready to rumble.  We started with one of them later, but eventually bought a sheep's foot and pulled it behind.

We made a shop trailer with the old white/green trailer and got a park model.












We bought a place out at Old Harney Road.  Moving camp took awhile  We had a camper, a 750  gallon fuel trailer, a shop truck, an old lowboy, 2 cats and a Toyota Crew Cab. The wind blew on top of the hill and it was obvious we needed a shed to work on the equipment during the winter.

The "spare" trailer house was getting ready to leave as they began building the shed.



















The final product.  We sold the business in November 1980 and moved to Gillette Wyoming Dec 26, 1980.  Good memories, but glad we aren't still doing it.

So much for throw-back Thursday.

A'Hunting We Will Go

Coming down off Promise - no luck for 'shroom or wildlife.





Of course we started the hunt in earnest the next day.   Went out Powatka and on down to the river then up Eden Bench.  The road down is one switchback after another.

And there they are on Eden Bench......too early for babies though.

BUT NO MUSHROOMS!

Eden Bench from Powatka Ridge


And we live to hunt another day!

More Chasing of the Goose

Well we finally found a few mushrooms but it was hard picking.  This was a few hundred yards of the trail at the head of the lake.  Wiley even got in on the action.

Then we went down the Imnaha; found a fish weir (I guess) and Dave figured the whole thing out.

There are still snow drifts in the county.  The dogs liked to wrestle on this little one.  They weren't sure what snow actually is.

The Upper Valley looking toward the wilderness.

Then on to the north side of the county.  Looking down from the Powatka Ridge.

The narrow steep grade down Powatka for the final descent to the river.

On Eden Bench. An old orchard.

A little way down the road we DID find mushrooms as well as more scenery.

Wiley loves to look out the open window.  He's beginning to think he's a big dog.

And then I drove pellmell into a rotten snow drift.  Actually on purpose - There were two of us.  And after a few tense minutes we headed on until  we found a "huger" snowdrift.

And then we turned around and went all the way back to Troy then up Buford to Enterprise and home.  Thanks Dave for the pull.

Moving Norther

We had a good time at Elk Hollar but it was time to move to Wallowa County.  Maybe there'll be mushrooms over there.  Thanks Wes and Cindy for allowing us to crash at your spot.  We loved it!

Darn! No mushrooms here.  But we did have a nice walk.

This picture is for the Sista Linda.  Deb and I are sure she could come up with something artsy fartsy with them.

Dave and Deb left the day before us to meet other friends in Union.  We had arranged for Ken's neice Marilyn to come visit.  We have seen her for almost 20 years.  Man!  She does look like her Dad, Bob, Ken's brother.

We had a great visit!

And then it was time to pull out.  Ken was at the "hand direction" center of the operation.  I drove through two sets of trees to get turned around and hook up the trailer.  Hey!  I missed the trees by about 6" on each side.  Yup!  The brain is back working quite nicely \ken.

There's a nice little RV Park right by Union Hot Springs where we found Dave/Deb/Pat/Ward.  Visited a little, took  a couple of pictures and headed on to Wallowa.

                                                          Deb, the tour guide!

In LaGrande we landed at Ken's sister, Grace.  Don was washing the side of the house and not really getting the job done.  Ken was tickled to get the Awesome and watch it come right off.

And on to Wallowa