Gregory Hillman » Oregon http://www.gregoryhillman.org Helpful opinions based upon the experiences of a real person that can improve the quality of your life. Fri, 18 Nov 2011 16:54:21 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 Trees Down On South Mt. Hood Oregon http://www.gregoryhillman.org/2009/01/20/trees-down-on-south-mt-hood-oregon/ http://www.gregoryhillman.org/2009/01/20/trees-down-on-south-mt-hood-oregon/#comments Wed, 21 Jan 2009 00:45:36 +0000 admin http://www.gregoryhillman.org/?p=7 After driving for many hours I came across many downed trees on the south side of Mt. Hood.  The trees were all right next to the roads in the national forest which was beautiful but as you can see here very dangerous.  I first started to get concerned when there were many leaves and branches littering the road due to the high winds.  There were no signs or advisories mentioned but it was clear after about an hour of driving that the conditions were getting worse and could be hard to navigate.  Then there were about 10 trees on the road.  Most of them took up about half of the road and I drove around each one trying to make it to my destination.  Finally I saw one tree that was much larger than the rest.  I thought at first that I could drive around this one much like the others but after a quick hit of the break pedal I had to stop because there was no clearance around either side.

Fallen Trees in Oregon

The tree had fallen from about 50 feet inside the forest, across the road, and through more than 50 feet of trees on the other side.  This made the tree impossible to move.  It was viced between over 40 trees and with each semi that would try to push and pull it seemed harder to move it away.
Even creating planks to jump the tree with a 4×4 did not work out and a trip that was over 3 hours out of the way was next.  I waited for about 40 minutes but all that was found was over 100 stopped semis on the road.  After seeing yet another tree that was larger fall in the road 1/4 mile up there was little option but to try to travel around.  Be careful when traveling through Oregon with wind because you might find yourself stuck behind or under a fallen tree!  The next day on the radio I heard that these major roads were closed for over 24 hours.  Drive safe.
tree on road 225x300 Trees Down On South Mt. Hood Oregon

Tree on Road Near Mt. Hood

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