PLSO May June 2019

Professional Land Surveyors of Oregon | www.plso.org 11 Featured Article I think it took maybe 20 to 30 minutes, carrying our packs and other necessi- ties. Seems it took more than one trip to get everything in the first time. That first time hiking out we quickly realized how much elevation we had lost. As the weeks progressed, we all got in better shape but those first couple of times, es- pecially if you were carrying anything, it was brutal. I remember feeling good if I could take 10 steps without stopping to rest—and I was only 23 years old! The men on the crew were of similar age ranging from the early 20’s to early 30’s. A couple of crew members thought we should bring in a keg of beer. That was nixed due to weight. Apparently back then the Forest Service didn’t have a problem with alcohol after hours. So in- stead of beer, pretty much everyone just brought in a pint or fifth of liquor, mine being bourbon. We used to have a pretty good time sit- ting around the campfire sipping bourbon, playing the harmonica and telling stories. I was also introduced to chewing tobac- co on this project, a decision I regretted many years later. I’m sure today we would be required to have a dedicated paid camp cook, but back then the party chief just asked, “Who wants to be camp cook?” Someone vol- unteered thinking that it would be easy duty, just cooking and cleaning up after we headed out to survey. I don’t remem- ber who it was, but his idea of cleanliness was sorely lacking. The second or third day of the first week several of the crew members got severe diarrhea, one of them being our old friend, Stan Thompson. We discovered that even though the dishes and silverware appeared clean, they were far from that. Apparently, our cook thought rinsing them off and wip- ing them down was good enough. Stan and others made it very clear to him that this was totally unacceptable. I don’t re- member if this person was dismissed but he should have been. Our second chief cook was my good friend, Scott Gordon. He did a tremendous job, having to get up before everyone, getting the camp- fire going, making coffee and breakfast and while we ate, he made our lunch- es, truly a significant contribution. He also made dinner and did all the dishes. I think someone helped him in the eve- ning, but I can’t be sure about that. No one ever got sick again and I don’t recall if he ever got any special recognition, but he should have. The first order of business was to clear line so we could start the traverse and cross sections. Weworked bothways from camp, working our way back to where we left off when we were driving in. The crew going easterly was in virgin territo- ry. We were working in an area that was seriously all old growth timber, Firs and Cedars six- to eight-feet (or more) in di- ameter at the base. A number of them had fallen over through the centuries, compounding the difficulty of the proj- ect. There was one section in particular where the trees had fallen pretty much on the line we were to follow. When we came to it we thought that this section had been overlooked because the flag- ging we were following had disappeared for several hundred feet. Turns out, our supervisor had gotten on top of these fallen trees and continued to tag line. We had gotten used to seeing the flags no more than six feet off the ground, but in this section, flagging was 10–15 feet above where we were standing. I don’t recall who noticed the flagging way up in the air, but we had a pretty good laugh about it when we got back to the office at the end of the week. Remember the na- tive American guy, Stan, from a previous chapter? He was still with us, and since he had a fair amount of experience with chainsaws and big trees, he was delegat- ed to do the cuts through the ones we couldn’t see over. There was one log in particular that really stood out. We were going across a very steep side slope and there was a massive Cedar lying down. Stan cut about a 3-foot section out of it so we could walk through easily, and every- thing was fine for a couple of days. One morning as we were hiking to where we quit the day before, we came to that tree that had been cut, but it was like it had never been touched. Upon closer scru- tiny, we could see what happened. The uphill section had slid down and perfect- ly matched up with the downhill section. Everyone was thankful that no one had been walking through that space when it slid. It could have been gruesome. Stan took another section out and it never slid again. Everyone always stepped very quickly through that section from then on. As the summer progressed things went fairly well. The best thing about this proj- ect was that wewereworking four 10-hour days to get our 40 hours in, so we were only out in the woods for three nights ev- ery week. I was never real big on camping out so this was something I could tolerate. We were called out to go to a forest fire, maybe two. I can’t remember if it was a big or small one, but it must have been pretty serious for us to break camp and hike out. Once the rains started in late Septem- ber or October things got pretty tough in the woods. Hiking in and out and just doing our work over slippery terrain re- quired extra care. I remember coming in on a Monday morning and trudging through snow to get to the camp. It had snowed enough to collapse one or two of the tents, which, of course, delayed the day’s work. My tent was one of the flat ones and I remember being teased that we must not have done a very good job setting it up. The tents were good qual- ity and everything inside was dry, but it was still a pain in the backside to re- erect the tent. I know we kept at it until at least mid- November. The reason I can recall it so well is that I had to vote absentee in the upcoming presidential election. It was my first opportunity to vote as the voting age was still 21 at that time. I can recall someone calling on the radio sometime the next day and asking who won? We all remember who won, don’t we? Sometime in November, I’m fairly certain it was before Thanksgiving, it snowed pretty heavily so we decided to give it up. The final trip in and out with all our gear was physically taxing, but I think we did it with smiles on our faces because trying to accomplish much in the short daylight hours that we had was wearing on everyone pretty hard. We were very glad to call it quits for the season. I think most of us were laid off shortly after that for the winter. Sometime in early 1973 the area that we were work- ing in was declared a roadless area and all the work we had done was probably just stored away someplace, kind of like the end of that Indiana Jones movie.  x