Last week, Casey Jump loaded a Peterson wood recycling machine with diagonal lines. (Photo by Chris Peterson)

Last week, a huge but surprisingly quiet machine was working in the woods of the Crystal Cedar area, grinding huge piles of diagonal lines into sawdust.

This behemoth is the child of Cameron Jump, and his family runs John Jump Trucking in Evergreen.

The Peterson wood recycling machine, as its official name, has an 800-horsepower diesel engine and electronic control device, which can crush waste wood to approximately 90 to 100 tons per day.

It may grind more, but the truck must travel between FH Stoltze Land in Columbia Falls and the wood factory, where the chips will be used in the company's combined heat and power plant, which burns the chips.

Cameron Wohlschlegel, land and resource manager at Stoltze, said during a visit last week that in addition to providing heat to the plant, the plant also provides approximately 2.5 megawatts of electricity to the grid.

The original plan was to burn the slash pile of waste wood from the Crystal-Cedar Stewardship project, and Stoltze signed a contract with the project. But nearby residents raised concerns earlier this year because it is so close to the factory that it is economical to grind the wood and burn it in an almost carbon-neutral thermal power plant.

The project aims to cut down the woods a few miles north of Columbia Falls near the North Fork and improve the viewing of deer and elk. The stands are mainly black pine, Paul Donnellon, the supervising forester of the Glacier Landscape/Hungry Horse Ranger area.

He explained that the area was destroyed by the half-moon fire in 1929 and was overgrown with ebony and birch trees. Lodgepole is not fire resistant and may cause large-scale canopy fires during the fire season. The project thinned the stumps and retained most of the fire-resistant tree species, such as Douglas fir and larch.

As a management sales, Stoltze receives wood in exchange for other work, such as thinning maple and hardwood, so they will be restored to a level where wild animals can browse them.

When everything is finished, they will do some small road work and other road maintenance work. The project was only about half completed.

The current thinning is a bit ugly, but it should recover in a few years. Saplings have shown regeneration in previously thinned areas.

Wohlschlegel said that Stoltze plans to grind up a large number of contracts with Jump throughout the winter. It should provide fuel for the thermal power plant for about six months.

People who use this road-locals like hunting, hiking and other outdoor activities-should proceed with caution because there will be heavy truck traffic from time to time.

Grinding the slash pile does have some limitations. Jump pointed out that these piles must be transported from the mill for about an hour or so, otherwise it would be uneconomical to haul chips.

But on this project, "we think it's very appropriate," Wohlschlegel said.

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