Tree Service in Lewis County, WA

Lewis County is timber ground with a river running through the middle of it, and nearly every tree problem here traces back to one of those two facts. Either the water got to the roots, or the stand it grew up in was planted all at once and is now aging all at once.

Everything Down on the Flat Answers to the Chehalis

The valley floor from Vader through Winlock, Chehalis and Centralia sits on deep river silt with a winter water table close to the surface. Good farm ground, hard tree ground. Roots stay shallow because the anchoring soil below stays saturated, and black cottonwood, Oregon ash, red alder and willow dominate the bottoms because they are the species that tolerate wet feet.

When the Chehalis comes up, two things happen that people underestimate. Moving water scours soil off the upstream side of a root plate, and slack water drops silt on the downstream side — often burying the root flare a foot deeper than the tree ever grew. Buried flares suffocate slowly and rot from the collar out, so the tree that looks fine the spring after a flood is frequently the one that fails three or four winters later. If your property took water, the first thing worth doing is digging the flares back out to grade.

The other river fact is wind. The Chehalis Gap is the low opening between the Willapa Hills and the Olympics, and the strongest inland windstorms in this part of the state come through it. Saturated bottomland soil plus a hard southwest blow is the combination that lays over cottonwood and alder every few winters.

The Rot Moves in Circles Through Managed Fir

Most of the upland forest in this county is managed second growth — even-aged Douglas fir planted, thinned and cut on a cycle. That produces a lot of good timber and one specific hazard for anyone who builds a house next to it. Laminated root rot moves tree to tree through root contact and expands as a slow circle through the stand. The crown often shows nothing until late, so the first symptom is a fir that goes over in a wind that should not have taken it, followed by its neighbors over the next several years.

Look for pockets of dead and dying fir with an opening in the middle, stems with a distress crop of small cones, and windthrown trees whose root balls came up shallow, brittle and hollow rather than snapping off. Red alder along the same edges is a shorter conversation — alder is fast, short-lived and full of heart rot well before it looks old, and half the leaning trees on back property lines in Lewis County are alder past their date.

East of Morton It Becomes a Mountain County

Past Mossyrock the county climbs into the Cascades — Riffe and Mayfield reservoirs, the Cowlitz and Cispus valleys, Gifford Pinchot country and White Pass. Elevation changes the whole problem. Ash-cap volcanic soils are droughty in late summer and shallow-rooting, wet snow and ice load stands hard every winter, and the standing timber runs to noble and silver fir and hemlock as you gain ground. Cabin and second-home properties around the lakes tend to carry tall, close-grown fir that was never thinned and has nothing but its neighbors holding it up.

Down the I-5 Corridor and Up US 12

Each town below has its own write-up covering the local soils, the species that dominate there and the access issues that show up on almost every bid.