Heli-Logging

Every tree Waaykaash harvests has a story.

It can take up to a year for a tree to make its way from the forest floor, where the wind has thrown it, to market.

The process often begins in a chopper, on a scouting mission from the air. Flying over the rugged forests of Nootka Island, scouts spot the windfall cedars and mark their location on a geo-referenced map. Next, team members known as “walkers” head into the dense forest on foot, find the trees, and figure out the best way to access them. That might mean cutting trails to them so they can be reached by the road, but it usually means coming in by helicopter. Sometimes the walkers head in to the forest directly to look for the fallen trees without any helicopter reconnaissance.

Then buckers either fly or walk in. They clean up the giant logs (on average, six feet in diameter) and cut them into 15 – 20 foot lengths that can be safely transported. The logs are measured and tagged and left for pick up.

Next comes the most exciting part: when there are enough logs awaiting pick up, the helicopter flies in with an air crane to gather them. This happens about once every 10 months and takes several weeks.

The helicopter works fast, gathering 25 – 30 logs per hour. This is a big endeavor—just one log can weigh up to 10,000 pounds! The helicopter flies the logs to the nearest road. From there, trucks take over, transporting them to the shoreline where they are then barged to the dry-land log sort on Nootka Island.

At that point, Waaykaash’s job is done, and business partner A&A Trading takes over to sort the logs and bring them to market.

A small percentage of logs are kept for local sales and custom milling at the Nuchatlaht Tribe’s mill near Zeballos, B.C.

Salvage logging is physically grueling work, and the Waaykaash team operates in all types of weather. “We’ve been out there in 100 km per hour winds,” says Erick Michael, Waaykaash co-owner. But it has its rewards: after a month of living in camp and working daily in the dense forest, the sense of accomplishment is huge. The crew go home knowing they’ve done one of the toughest jobs imaginable in order to bring high-quality lumber to market, while leaving the forest ecosystem intact.