Winter Roads

Mountaynman · January 14, 2024, 04:59:45 PM

Beginning to feel like traditional winter truck roads at the back of large tracts are becoming a thing of the past with these warmer wet winters by now in the central adirondacks we should be 3 weeks into harvest plans but just now this week are going to attempt to get some froze down water everywhere rivers are at spring runoff levels anyone else having the same troubles

Firewoodjoe · January 14, 2024, 07:01:21 PM

I think everyone is in the same boat. Seems the last decade or better we've been 4-8 weeks late on good winter. And then it's just a bad winter. Warm on and off. According to the national weather we still get total snow fall but it's just never cold for more than a few weeks at a time. Cold this week. It's dropped from 14 to 9 so far today. Now if it stays below 25 for three months it will be decent. Luckily there's dry ground here if you can get it before the next guy. It does help the wood market though if it's a bad winter. Production goes down overall.

Ron Scott · January 14, 2024, 07:30:21 PM

The stumpage prices often increase during a bad winter.

mike_belben · January 14, 2024, 08:22:41 PM

You guys are describing every tennessee winter. I dont even start logging until its been miserable and wet long enough for sawmill inventory to drop.

My next goal is to get them to send a truck to me and still pay decent. We will see if i have any luck on that.

Firewoodjoe · January 14, 2024, 08:26:32 PM

What I mean by bad winter is bad for logging. Warm and muddy. A bad winter for most people would be cold and snowy. Well that's good for logging. Then yes stumpage goes up. Mills fill up and quotas come on.

Mud, then wood stacks up in the woods. Mills are low on wood and no quotas. I'd be ok with that. To a certain extent. Just because of quotas.

mike_belben · January 14, 2024, 08:28:18 PM

Yes i know. We dont freeze. We just rain and make clay stew. If it snows tonight, tomorrow by sundown its more stew. All winter. Its like grease on a mirror for traction. One quarry i used to work at i had to be in and out with a load before sunup or that slick tire cascadia would be buried a mile back in the woods without service anywhere.

Old Greenhorn · January 14, 2024, 09:50:05 PM

Quote from: Firewoodjoe on January 14, 2024, 08:26:32 PM
What I mean by bad winter is bad for logging. Warm and muddy. .......

I consider any season 'bad' if it is atypical, that is odd and not in keeping with the normally expected weather trends. Winter is cold, summer is hot. These are simple rules and they should be followed, right? Sometimes I wonder what they are doing with all the tax money I pay if they can't even get this right. I may just start holding something back on the tax bill until they get the weather right. Machines should NOT get stuck in the mud in February, it's a RULE! Or, at least, it was. I think this is all a result of the 'woke thing' and 'cancel culture'. :D

Seriously, I am just a little retired guy trying to make a few bucks to get by and harvesting mushroom logs and I can't even do that with this warm weather. The trees aren't behaving normally, the sap isn't holding in the stumps. Warm days make the sap jump up getting all excited, then it gets a little cold and it drops back down. The trees are getting really confused (and likely starting to question their own gender choices).

I tell you it's just nuts and I am glad I am getting near the end of things, rather than being at the beginning and dealing with this stuff for a lifetime.

newoodguy78 · January 14, 2024, 10:45:29 PM

OG I was cutting some small sugar maples the other day about the size you've shown for mushroom logs,
and the sap was pouring out of them. Was odd to see this time of year,got me thinking about how it is possibly effecting your harvest.
I don't envy any of you guys trying to get things done in the woods right now, it's reached saturation level awhile ago and kept coming. Started getting colder today hopefully things stiffen up.

barbender · January 14, 2024, 11:48:36 PM

It has finally got good and cold up here. All the roads that had started to freeze down, and then thawed out completely around Christmas, are freezing back down again. They'll be froze good with a week of below 0° temps, and then we are supposed to see 20's and 30's again next week- which is unseasonably warm for us.

Northern MN timber harvesting relies heavily on the fact that the ground turns to concrete in the winter. A lot, perhaps even a majority, of our wood is winter frozen ground access only. An easy winter like this really stretches the "catalog" of timber sales guys have bought up- you pay more for wood that has summer access, but years like this guys have to harvest that wood because it is all they can get too.

CTL equipment can often harvest the wood regardless, but they were even shut down for a week around Christmas. We were just saturated. Aside from that, a lot of the challenge is getting the haul roads in, it doesn't do any good to cut and deck the wood if you can't haul it.

Andries · January 14, 2024, 11:58:04 PM

Hey BB, you're not so far South of us.
Happy to share!
This should help:

SwampDonkey · January 15, 2024, 04:43:14 AM

Everything has stayed pretty solid here since just after Christmas, even with the mild spells the ground is still solid, except a little greasy for a few hours after a rain, but solid again in no time. I see some folks say they got 12" of snow, then the rain took it all off the next day. What? That never happens here, you might loose the top 4" if it rained all day long at 40 degrees. :D The small rivers and streams are not as thick with ice. Sometimes they are chilled over and then 4 days of mild they are opened up. The little creeks here did ice up some this winter, last year they were never froze over all winter. You won't dare walk on the ice though. And it's never been severe cold here yet, not the cold that I call severe anyway. Certainly been no -20F here, not even close. We have one of them winters that is mostly cloudy, when we get that it ain't severe cold. Got to be clear and stars or sunny to get cold in this region. Very few sunny days this year.

Mountaynman · January 15, 2024, 05:22:13 AM

Barbender what your describing is the same here heading in to scrape off and work a couple mile stretch to hopefully get a contractor moved in there by the end of the week certainly shortens up the harvest windows and they are having a hard time to find enough men to run 24/7 anymore hard to find enough to fill out a crew really

Firewoodjoe · January 15, 2024, 08:52:20 PM

Mountaynman are there 24/7 woods crews there? I wish I could find the man power and was able to run 24 hours. I'd try buying new equipment. But small jobs and a lot of private just wouldn't work. To many residents it would upset. And no chance of hiring anyone let alone good enough to trust all night.

barbender · January 15, 2024, 10:41:56 PM

I was told there were mill crews up in the Canadian Maritime provinces running CTL teams 24/7. Iirc there was a Ponsse Beaver up there that got 50K hours on an original engine. It was only turned off for oil changes and maintenance/ break downs.

I was out in a forwarder today, it was mud central even though it was -20° F when I left the house. We got so much rain around Christmas, just a really strange situation. The ground is totally saturated.

SwampDonkey · January 16, 2024, 03:44:09 AM

A lot of crews that are left on crown cut around the clock anyway all year except spring break up. I know a lot of guys out of the woods business in the last 5-10 years. There's crews out of Quebec in some areas. And Irving has a bunch of immigrants from eastern Europe they housed and trained. Wood is rolling down the road at 5:00 am in the summer time when I go to work. So someone had to be there even earlier than that because the trucks don't have loaders. Last fall where I was thinning along a main woods road the trucks never stopped. It probably rained 5 days a week out there. I never saw the sun all fall, one big cloud or fog bank on the ridge. :D

Dom · January 16, 2024, 06:50:06 AM

As SwampDonkey mentioned it's common around here to run 24/7 when working for large mills (Irving).
It was also common in northern Ontario and Quebec, especially during winter. Irving would and I guess still do, finance the machines for the contractors. The contractors were guaranteed work, but had to work to Irving's schedule and rates.

Mountaynman · January 17, 2024, 05:09:05 AM

Trucks used to run round the clock with either 2 drivers or one guy living in the truck have had crews switch it up and log at night to finish a job at the end of the season but most now are having a hard enough time now just filling all the seats. Looks like we might just get the weather to freeze this road in. Had it roughed in during the fall and all the drainage held up we usually get screwed by the hunters roaring around on the side by sides during deer season.

Mountaynman · January 18, 2024, 05:24:44 PM

85% there with the road only about 1.5 miles of new 3.5 from the pavement but real rolly polly few real problem spots but they like it pickup worthy now buncher and stroker tracked in from where they were cutting off the same road system see how tomorrow goes next week dont look all that good should be solid after saturday im sure the rest of the show will roll in tomorrow after they send the scraps out tomorrow morning three cleanup loads

Mountaynman · January 23, 2024, 06:29:00 PM

wow not the winter for a traditional winter road got it froze over the weekend and they started hauling and we started hauling rock think we might have a chance after we work thru the next week between us hauling rock and them hauling wood frost should be pounded down see how it goes

nativewolf · January 23, 2024, 06:57:50 PM

Well I tried to post a pic but I guess I have to wait a bit. We have had a heckuva Dec and Jan. Rain all Dec and then the cold that hit most folks. So the ground was saturated and then froze...sort of. We have two hills into our site and they...suck. Existing road, only way in and out. Logs piled up on the landing, 5 sorts going on and running out of space a bit.