Complete disaster! The ridge groves of Catsaic are FUBAR!

[Shore Stalker]

(Pics below)

I was heading out for what I was hoping would be a good day of recon at Castaic Lake! I wanted to see if the Bass had moved into the shallows yet, how cold the water was to the touch & how much shore I had access to do to the high water level (Its a few feet shy of Full)! Little did I know the recon I did would have little to do with fishing (Water was cold to the touch, very murky & 3ft to high for my spot! Not a bite!)!

I parked up by the church at the spot where all the boats turn around to line up before the lake opens! As I walked down into the old park I noticed the tree line seemed to be...missing! At first I figured the rain or wind took some trees down! The further down the path I went the more horrifying the realty became! The area had been all but clear cut by loggers for firewood! 95% of the trees (around 200) were gone... but they were still there! They have been bucked & cut into 16in logs and piled up in about 200 piles that are scattered erratically throughout the Old Park grounds! The park is now a disaster area!

The only word I can find to describe the scene is chaos! It's looks as if they were logging, starting fires, & fighting fires all at the same time!

There are piles of wood stacked everywhere! Some neatly stacked & some in a heap! The road is lined with large amounts of charcoal from burnt wood as if someone wanted to reenact Mad Max Fury Road! There are dozens burn spots scattered throughout the area (12ft circles) where they seemed to have starting small fires intentionally! There are dozens of piles of branches stacked 5 feet tall (Bonfires waiting to happen)! The ground has been completely torn up by heavy machinery & there is still equipment like fire hoses & couplings scattered throughout the area!

Now I don't consider myself tree huger! I'm a Charcoal burning, Cowboy steak eating, Beer guzzling, Slow Smoking, Violent movie watching Red blooded American but this was a cold wet slap to the face! Needless to say I was horrified! My shouts of "WTF!" Could probably be heard from both Dams! The Woods of the abandoned park that I had walked through with my father as a boy & with my friends as a man are completely gone forever but its remains was scattered everywhere I look! To me this is blasphemy!

I could tell that the logs had been cut within a week or so because the piles of branches still had green needles on them! The piles of logs all seemed to be cut from live trees with the dead ones simply cut down & left whole to rot on the ground! It appeared that this part of our National Forest has been turned into a firewood storage facility! As I looked across Hawks Nest Cove towards Trout Point I can see that the ridge on the other side has been clear cut as well!

I looked online & found the order! It was a bid to cut 25 trees! 25! I was looking at well over 100 fell trees! Now I'm looking for answers & heads! THIS PARK HAS BEEN COMPLETELY ABANDONED FOR OVER 30 YEARS! IT WAS A WASTE OF TAX DOLLARS TO BEGIN WITH! This travesty must have a million dollar price tag on it! They had to repair the road just to get down to the trees & that was no small feat! The decades of rain had eroded a 20ft wide 20ft foot deep hole in the road half way down! The same forces will erode the entire area into the lake now that the trees are gone!

I can understand cutting down dead trees to prevent beetle infestations and fires but this was a hack & slash job & to add insult to injury they left the place completely trashed! But I think I've said enough! You can see for yourself what they have done but unless you have walked those paths you will never know the true devastation that has occurred in this once sacred (at least to me anyways) place!

[Marley]

Tough to see a memorable setting like that get so drastically changed. Maybe I can help...
It's quite clear that the trees were dead when they were cut. Most of them very dead. You can even see insect damage in some of the cross sections. That last picture you post shows what looks like no fewer than seven dead, standing trees that should come down for the good of the chaparral. They are fuel for wild fires, which is why they were marked for wood harvesting. Cut the tree, salvage/harvest the fire wood and safely burn the twigs and remaining foliage before it gets hot and all that grass gets dry. Fresh, green wood won't burn like that, and it doesn't lose its bark like much of that wood has. Two more clues that the trees were very dead.
Sorry about the fishing, too.

[Shore Stalker]

Tough to see a memorable setting like that get so drastically changed. Maybe I can help...
It's quite clear that the trees were dead when they were cut. Most of them very dead. You can even see insect damage in some of the cross sections. That last picture you post shows what looks like no fewer than seven dead, standing trees that should come down for the good of the chaparral. They are fuel for wild fires, which is why they were marked for wood harvesting. Cut the tree, salvage/harvest the fire wood and safely burn the twigs and remaining foliage before it gets hot and all that grass gets dry. Fresh, green wood won't burn like that, and it doesn't lose its bark like much of that wood has. Two more clues that the trees were very dead.
Sorry about the fishing, too.

Those seven dead trees were among the dead ones they refused to cut into logs & instead are lying there on the ground to rot! Now they are just a horizontal fire hazard! As for all the piles....you don't pile up dead wood to dry in the summer heat!

Its been over a year since I last walked that path so I cant speak of the conditions of the trees before the harvest! I can say the place looks like a war zone! Other then the lack of trees and the scattered wood everywhere there are dozens of burnt circles in the ground! The way they stacked the branches together just happened to make about 30 perfect bonfire piles waiting to tempt the groups of youths that drink & get high in the area! There also appears to be no rhyme or reason on how they stacked the wood other then being cut to perfect camp fire sized logs!

They used the Bulldozers to knock trees over instead of cutting them! Between that, driving off road & dragging trees around the heavy machines dug huge farrows into the earth that will end up eroding the hillside & causing more debris to end up in the lake! They carelessly left hundreds of feet of fire hose behind! They cut trees that were still green into logs! You can see the picture where they tried to burn these logs but they were so green only the bark would burn! I'm a carpenter so I know what green wood looks like! Its a far cry from the dead stuff! I could have built log cabins out of what they cut down!

For doing "professional" work at a park in the National Forest these guys really screwed the pooch! The bird watchers that used to walk the area are going to have a fit when they see this!