South Dead Dog

This afternoon, we went out to the South Dog and across the Dead Dog Spine.  The nights have been cold, but the afternoons have been bright, sunny, and clear.  It was a very nice outing except that EDO's toes were cold.  Time for the Sorrels!

Gray Canyon

The latest storm brought less snow to the east of Price.  So we went to Green River, drove to Nefertiti, and walked upstream from there.

There were a few muddy spots but it was another very nice day.

Failed Canyon Hike

Today we planned to hike some of the deeper canyons around the San Rafael River.  There wasn't much snow in Price, but by the time we got to the Dutch Flat Road we were plowing through about eight inches.  Eventually I stopped driving at a deep ditch where I was worried about the Chev getting stuck.  We weren't near the trailhead, but decided to try going cross country.  As you can see (above), we did make progress towards the canyon.  But, it was a trudge.  After a mile and a half we turned around.  A failed hike.  Nice day, though.

Not Glamping

While the reading may seem somewhat high-brow, this is definitely not glamping.  I am experimenting with the "hot tent" as a way to spend some of the fall and winter in the woods.  Unfortunately, the cheap teepee style tent is only tall enough for me to stand up directly in the middle, which is where the tent pole and stove pipe live, so I'm spending my time shuffling around the edges bent over like an old man.  Plus, there is no floor, so I'm sitting in the dirt.  Definitely not glamping.

Five Hundred Years On

As may be apparent, my current project area is a pine site near Emery, Utah.  There are many younger trees, but the oldest material is more than 500 years old.  I have a few pith dates from dead wood cross sections from the 1400s (below), but the oldest live tree I've found is this one (above).  It is also the largest at 41 inches.  I've been unable to conclusively cross date the cores, so the true dates are probably plus or minus five, but my estimate is that the tree germinated around 1520.

Hard on the Tools

I went to my project area at the top of Link Canyon yesterday.  I was coring my first tree, the second core, when I got the increment borer stuck.  I eventually retrieved it from the tree, but it was completely plugged.  Useless until I can drill it out.  Oh well, at least I had the saw.  On my second cross section, a stump, I got through it only to find a piece of rebar in the wood.  Great.  Now the chain was completely dull, and I didn't have a spare.  Two hours from Price and the tools are shot.  It goes to show that, when you're working in ponderosa, you need to have two or three of everything.

Stumped

It has been quiet at this newspaper for a while.  One of things I've been working on is the dating of a stump from a (possibly) culturally modified tree (ponderosa pine) from Joes Valley.  Twenty-years ago, one of the local archaeologists cut a piece of wood from a dead tree that they identified as a CMT.  They placed it in a cardboard box and noted that it could provide evidence of the dates of Native American peeling.  I found it last week.  So far as I could tell, it had not been touched for two decades, and certainly no one had tried to date it.  I sanded it and went to work (above).  But, as archaeologists like to complain:  It was out of context.  What part of the tree was it?  To work that out, I joined our current archaeologist in locating the stump last week (below).  The red line shows where the wood had been removed.  For anyone interested in dating a piece of dead wood, that wasn't the best way to do it.  But, just knowing how it was cut has helped me a lot.  I now have a tentative pith date of 1585.