Callahans reopen

[letsroll]

Thanks for the info. Guess I will wait till spring, or the mind winter high pressure to set in

[g orton]

Winter in the Callahans

 

Harold Hall exploring Lizad's Ledge, New Year's Day

[billcoe]

I'll be closing on a tiny lot down on Touchstone Lane soon, so I'm going to be spending some time down there this winter, clearing, camping, and climbing.

 

Kirby, do you feel like sharing this story? ie, why, where, how much? I'd like to hear it if you do.

[J_Kirby]

Hey Bill, I'm not on here that much these days, but I don't mind sharing a bit. My new chunk of dirt is about a quarter mile down Touchstone from the end of the pavement. Just a tiny little lot under the power lines that's barely big enough to put a trailer on, but close enough to the climbing to make the $25 a year in property tax worthwhile. I just need to clear the 6 foot tall poison ivy and it'll be good to go.

[billcoe]

You bought it just as a retreat for climbing? That's neat! I like what Off White did, ie, buy the actual cliff! He just steps off his deck and is climbing. Sweet stuff.

 

BTW, pffft, 6' high Poison Oak is nothing. Go through and clip it off, and when it regrows spray it. They say AFTER the berry's form ( early fall) is the best time to hit the stuff.

 

I have a 55- 60 footer I'm looking at logging off. Seriously. I'd be afraid of saying anything more for fear that it qualifies as protected "Old Growth" and there's likely a bunch of Spotted Owls nesting up in the canopy which, being so high up, is not visible from the ground. It's huge. I'm thinking it needs to be logged off and the act put on U-tube as the size of this thing would blow peoples mind.

 

It was only a few years ago that I learned how large these things grow. I was out on the top of the Butte coiling my rope after a day of climbing in the fall, when I looked down and saw a red Poison Oak leaf near my feet...looking around, I saw another, then another then another. As I've been going to that area over there on and off for @ 37-38 years, I had in fact killed the (waist high or so) Poison Oak in this very area a couple of times. I looked up and realized that the vine wrapped around the Doug Fir tree in front of me was in fact, Poison Oak, but it was so high, that you couldn't see the leaves and it was sooooo BIG, that it wasn't recognized as Oak. DOHHH! I'm talking right next to a climbers trail. No one recognized it for what it really was, despite perhaps 1,000s of climbers and other visitors actually having seen it. It was only in the fall, seeing a leaf on the ground where there should have been none, that I got clued in. Now I have a better eye for the old growth ones.

 

Pretty crazy.

 

The big ones are easy, saw it off, paint on some roundup stuff. If it's going to rain, take a paper towel moistened with Glycolstuff/roundup and stuff it in the bottom of a dixie cup, flip the cup over the recently sawed stump and duct tape it on. Keeps any new roots from sprouting. Come back for the cup and the trash in a few days. Here's a picture of Plaidman, Jimmy and myself pulling and sawing off a bigger one, big at @ 35-40' tall up the tree, but much smaller than the monster I have in my sights. I'm holding the sawed off Poison Oak "tree". Jim is not allergic and he's pulling out all the little runners (what we all recognize as Poison oak) under the dirt barehanded. The leaves have all dropped off as winter is close, but the stalks are still recognizable. He will rub his hands with dirt before he does this to fill his pores.

 

I somehow got it this day despite the rubber gloves. Jim didn't despite ripping it out with his bare hands...sigh...

[J_Kirby]

Kill it with fire . . . spotted owls are delicious. I will try the cut and spray method on the (relatively) small grove I've got, though, since fire is somewhat frowned upon down there. Sounds pretty doable.

 

The property actually has some sentimental value for my wife's family too, though a local basecamp is all I was really after. Some day I'll buy the cliff I've got my eye on, but that's a long ways off.