On visual assessment

Some of you wonder what I do with all my time at school and why I am always coming home wet and/or dirty. I’ve vaguely explained that it involves plenty of data collection, but I’ve always thought a serious explanation would be tedious at best. But you’re in luck, dear readers, because today I have lots of photos.

My classmates and I were lucky enough to go on an overnight camping trip to the Gifford Pinchot National Forest for silviculture lab. Lots of things were barbecued, of course, and someone may have even carved initials into a tree (for shame!) but we also spent a considerable amount of time running up and down hills at the Wind River Experimental Forest.

Adventures with sawdust

Because I have a completely awesome instructor, my Timber Harvesting & Products class gets to take the best field trips ever. We recently traveled to the McDonald-Dunn Forest near Corvallis to observe the Oregon State University student logging crew in a thinning operation, and then went to the historic, zero-automation Hull-Oakes mill in Dawson for a tour, and finally to Freres Brothers mill in Lyons to observe a state-of-the-art automated operation. Thank goodness our instructor is energetic and excited about putting these trips together.