Running in the Rockies

Hiked ~3.4 miles with the pups and hubby. Nice cool autumn day, the last of the aspen are turning and starting to fall- the trail looked golden from all the leaves. Very pretty. The pups had a great time and no one seemed to get too tired. 

Later, we went to collect firewood in the national forest. The USFS is incredibly civilized when it comes to allowing citizens to cut down and collect dead trees for firewood- a permit for a cord is only 20$! There have been more and more trees killed from the pine bark and ips beetles in our area, so taking down the dead or infected trees is actually fire mitigation (in addition to helping lessen the spread of beetles)- and we get firewood for pretty cheap.  I hope more people take advantage of this and help protect the mountain communities.

At any rate- I think we took down about 5 big trees (bases ~15-22" in diameter and 50-70' tall?) and cut them into ~4-5' logs and then carried them on our shoulders down a pretty steep slope to our truck. They probably weighed anywhere from 20- 80 lbs and maybe 2-3 at 90-100 lbs- I struggled with the really heavy ones this year. Once we unloaded them in our driveway, we had to carry them around the back of the house to our cutting and chopping area. We spent about 4-5 hours on the wood and I got about an hour of actual chopping in. The only thing that was sore was my shoulders- they are pretty bruised from carrying the logs. Now we only need to repeat this about 7-8 more times and we'll be ready for winter!