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.