Tree Service in Okanogan County, WA

A homeowner in Mazama and an orchardist above Brewster live in the same county and have almost nothing in common. One is dealing with snow load and standing dead timber on a steep timbered lot. The other is pulling a worn-out block on a gravel terrace and thinking about what to plant behind it.

The Ice Came Down This Valley, Not Across It

A lobe of the continental ice sheet pushed south down the Okanogan valley and shoved itself against the Columbia. Its leftovers are why the low country looks the way it does — rounded hills of till, long benches of outwash gravel standing above the rivers, and scattered knobs and kettles across the flats. That same ice dam is what sent the Ice Age floodwater down the Grand Coulee instead of its own channel.

For trees, that geology sets the terms. Outwash bench soil drains fast and holds almost nothing, which is why the fruit on those terraces lives entirely on applied water and why an unwatered shade tree fifty feet away looks half dead by August. Till is the opposite problem — dense, slow to take water, and shallow enough in places that roots run flat and wide just under the surface. Two neighbors on the same road can be growing trees in completely different material.

Fire-Killed Timber Is Its Own Kind of Job

The result of the last stretch of fire seasons is standing dead timber near houses, cabins, shops and driveways — sometimes for years after the smoke cleared, because nobody wanted to spend the money on a tree that was already dead and looked stable.

Fire-killed trees do not cut like live ones. The sapwood dries and checks, the base can be burned hollow on the side you cannot see from the driveway, and the hinge you planned on may not hold when you need it. Tops and dead limbs come loose without warning while someone is working underneath. Where there is any access at all, we would rather reach them from a lift or take them in short pieces with a crane than send a climber up a stem we cannot trust.

• Standing dead pine and fir leaning over a roof, a driveway or a power drop
• Scorched trees that leafed out once after the fire and then quit
• Thinning and fuel work so the next burn passes through the stand instead of into the crowns
• Clearing to reopen a driveway, a fence line or a building site after a burn

West of the River and East of It Are Two Counties

The Methow side is Cascades country: deep winter snow, steep timbered ground above Twisp, Winthrop and Mazama, ponderosa and Douglas fir with larch worked in, and houses tucked in among all of it. Snow and slope drive the work there — broken tops, bent understory, and driveways that a chipper truck cannot get up in March.

East of the Okanogan River the Highlands run drier and more open. Pine holds the north slopes, aspen sits in the draws, and ranch ground fills in between. Aspen clones across that country are thinning out in a lot of places, and a dying aspen patch beside a house is a fuel and hazard question as much as a health one. Down along the Columbia at Brewster and Pateros it changes again into orchard ground, where the tree work is block removal, windbreak replacement and stump grinding rather than anything resembling yard care.

Towns from the Columbia to the Crest

Pick a town below for what grows there, what the winter does to it, and who to ask about the rules on your particular piece of ground.