On Thursday, March 28, I attended the day-long "All Hands" Meeting of the Southwest Jemez Mountains Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Project at Santa Fe Community College.

Representatives of some of the 30 organizations participating in this project presented reports on projects related to wild fire, thinning, streams, wildlife, vegetation, restorations after floods, wetlands restoration, and cultural resources.

Ski Club members who skied with me this winter saw the results of the extensive thinning on the East Fork Ridge. We were especially interested in the very large piles of logs and slash (small trees and branches from felled trees). I talked with the contractor who is doing the thinning. I also talked with Bryan Riley, the Jemez District Ranger.

1. In order to not have slash and chipped slash scattered in the thinned area, the contractor is using a very large skidder to drag complete felled trees to each log landing where a large machine will strip off the branches that are then placed in very large piles. The logs are then stored in very large piles with a crane. They will be trucked to the Jemez Pueblo Walatowa Forest Industries site at the pueblo where they will be processed into vigas, lumber, beams, pellets, fire wood, and mulch. The large piles of slash will be burned when conditions are favorable to minimize smoke and the risk of wild fire.

2. Thinning will continue to the parking lot at the west trailhead of the East Fork Ridge Trail. Due to the thinning activities, access to the East Fork Ridge from that trailhead will be closed for a few months in 2019.

3. About 100 acres of the Los Griegos area south of NM-4 will be thinned on the lower mountain in the Lower Road area. (100 acres is not an especially large area on the very large north slope of this mountain. If the 100 acres is a square defined by 10 acres by 10 acres, each side of the square would be about 0.4 mile long [10 X 200 ft] or 2000/5000.)