Yesterday we did something we had never done before. We went into the mountains and hunted a Christmas tree in the wild! I first got the idea a year ago when a friend posted on Facebook how she had done that. I wanted to do it then but the permits were all sold out. So this year, near the beginning of November, we went online and bought a permit. It cost $22 with tax. We also printed out the map of the area where we could go. We bought our permit in the Heber-Kamas Ranger District. Yesterday we downloaded the map to Scott's phone and headed out.
We drove to Heber, UT, and then headed east on Highway 40 towards Daniel's Summit. We turned off a couple of times but decided to keep going. When we were almost to Daniel's Summit and Lodgepole Campground (but didn't realize it), we pulled off the road onto the shoulder and parked by some other cars.
A picture of this area I got off the internet--looks like summertime.
One of the challenges was to get down the hill we parked on, across Daniel's Creek and then up the mountain to find a tree. The instructions said to pick a tree at least 200 feet away from any roads or picnic areas or campgrounds. We were also supposed to only cut down a "sub-alpine fir." We aren't really experts on tree species but the instructions were pretty clear. The sub-alpine fir tree has softer needles that don't poke and if you try to roll a needle between your fingers, it won't roll because it's flat. Also, the bark is grey and has horizontal lines on it. We couldn't cut anything more than 20 feet high.
Fortunately there wasn't too much snow on the ground but enough for Mindy and Camille to complain a lot about getting snow in their hiking boots--snow pants would have been a good idea. We crossed the creek somewhat gingerly (turns out it was completely frozen farther down) and then trekked up the mountain looking for our tree. The trees were not plentiful so we kept going up. Then we ran into the campground which meant we needed to go farther up to follow that 200 feet rule.
After spotting a couple of candidates, we finally selected our winner--about 9 feet, a little scrawny. It turns out that wild trees tend to be less full than the ones you see in the tree lots. But it has lots of character. Thankfully, it didn't put up any resistance when Scott cut it down. Now the tricky part was carrying it back to our car. Scott was heroic and carried it most of the way except for a short time when he had the girls carry it.
He loaded it into the back of the van (it just barely fit) and we drove home! We heard a lot of complaining from the girls (Camille was convinced she had frostbite--I told her that was not possible!) but it was really kind of an adventure for Scott and me. And the girls mostly kept up. It was definitely a work-out with going through the snow and going up the mountain.
We brought it in and set it up and it looks a little scrawny but good. We'll decorate it tomorrow. Are we going to do it again next year? We're not sure. We are thinking seriously about planting a few trees in our yard that we can cut down for future Christmas trees.
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