Turner, Interesting report. These are the types of sites that we need to better document before they are gone or forgotten about. We don't have many measurements from West Virginia, although Russ has provided some excellent descriptions and discussions. I doubt that the bears would be much use in holding your measuring pole, if that was what you were thinking...
Ed "The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science." - Albert Einstein ----- Original Message ----- From: turner To: ENTSTrees Sent: Friday, January 02, 2009 1:18 PM Subject: [ENTS] Shavers Mountain Old Growth Stand ENTS: This past October I had a chance to visit an old growth stand of Spruce/Hemlock. The stand is located on Shavers Mountain on the Cheat/ Potomac Ranger District of the Monongahela National Forest. The crest of Shavers Mountain in this area forms the eastern boundary of the 20,000 acre Otter Creek Wilderness area that was designated as such in 1975. Check out this link: http://www.fs.fed.us/r9/mnf/sp/ottercreek.html The Southern end of Shavers Mountain also contains the old growth Spruce site at the Gaudineer Scenic Area. It takes a bit of hike to get to the Shavers Mountain stand. The shortest hike is from the Mylius trailhead along Glady Fork on the east side and several miles north of US 33 East of Elkins, WV. From the trailhead it is a 1.7 and mile and +800 feet hike to the saddle between Glady Fork and Otter Creek then another 2.0 miles and + 600 feet along the Shavers Mountain trail. The stand is right along the trail and after surveying the Rhododendron my hiking companions thought they might continue on the trail and check out the bog/fen further out the trail and leave me to enjoy my questionable pursuit of measuring trees. I spent about 3 hours and got pretty accurate measurements on about twenty trees most of them using the ENTS Sine method with a laser and clinometer. I could have used an assistant with a pole to plumb the dept of the Rhody. However a heavy wet snow (12”) that fell a couple of days previously had beat down the Rhododendron a lot and a hard crust had formed on top and I was able to walk on top for substantial distances before crashing through. Every time I did crash through I thought of all the bear tracks and scat we had seen while hiking up the trail and wondered who I was disturbing. Here are the largest Red Spruce/P.rubens- 4.6’ and 88.0’ 6.3’ and 74.3’ with top out Eastern Hemlock/T. Canadensis- 6.8’ and 80.9’ 10.1’ and 78.1’ with top out Red Maple/A. rubrum 7.7’ and 79.6’ Black Cherry/P. serotina 6.9’ and 76.7’ Yellow Birch/ B.alleghaniensis 7.3’ and 67.6’ For a 5 species Rucker index of 78.6’ The acreage of this stand has variously been described between 50 and 100 acres. I may have covered 5 acres at the most. We did this for a day hike but next time it will be an overnighter so I can get over more of the stand. Supposedly there is another old growth stand on the west side along Turkey Run. I did not take any pictures but check these out in the following link: http://exploro-orbis-terrarum.smugmug.com/gallery/3781365_t5u6y/1/217928115 Also Jonathan Jessup does a lot of hiking and shoots lots of photos in the area. His work should be easy to find on the internet. Also good news – saw no signs of HWA Bad news- Beech has been wiped out along Shavers Mountain trail in this section Turner Sharp --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ Eastern Native Tree Society http://www.nativetreesociety.org You are subscribed to the Google Groups "ENTSTrees" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/entstrees?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
