Fremont Shields Tree Services

05/28/2025

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05/24/2025

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11/22/2024

11/21/2024

Been seeing this in more and more white fir here in the Sierras. Bad news if it’s near a home. It’s trees that were drought stressed, then the final straw was beetles. They typically die from the top down. What I find interesting and want to draw attention to is the visible white conk fungus on the outside and then the crosscut to show what’s happening on the inside. You can actually dig a fingernail into the black “lightning stripes” present in the cross cut and pull out a thin white mycelium (like a root for a fungus). The cross cut makes it look small, but when snapped you find that it projects more on the vertical planes up and down the tree. Making it much larger than I can show in this pictures. Think of it going straight up the trunk and we’re looking at a cross section only. I’m usually not climbing trees with this in it anymore if it’s advanced to a point where the conks are showing low on the trunk. Even if it sounds solid. My experience is that you climb up high enough that you weight starts a wobble, which is normal, but I like to see a little wobble resolve quickly…not a big wobble that seems exaggerated or “noodle-y”. If I can anchor off of and come in from another nearby healthy tree, that’s my preference. Then I hook into the tree to be removed with an intentionally weak break away flipline and try to think light thoughts like rock climbing grace is smooth and quiet.

I’ve pulled over now, with no cut made at all, a large 26” tree that was over a hundred & twenty feet tall. What’s scary is they don’t uproot, or break at at obvious weakness or deformity, rather they’ll break off wherever this outwardly invisible fungus has the greatest hold paired with the greatest leverage from the pull I’m making. In other words, not where you would commonly see a tree trunk fail. If you see these conks in trees in your property and they are in a position to cause damage if they failed, I would recommend having them removed sooner rather than later. They’re only going to get more dangerous and difficult, therefore costly, to remove. Thanks for reading!

11/10/2024

Demonstration of drift line technique on a ~1,700 lbs piece. We used this method to bring the pieces over my client's septic system before setting them down. The minimum breaking strength of any equipment used in this video exceeded 22,000lbs. Keeping rigging pieces under 1/10th of the rated strength of the equipment may sound excessive, but a little unexpected drop multiplies loads on the system 1x for each foot dropped. Staying inside your safe working load limits also ensures a long service life for expensive equipment.

11/03/2024

Ended the week helping ground for some friends on a crane job. The expected snowstorm came in late and the sun was still shining so I spent the afternoon working on another job. It’s a big alder in decay. One lead was still alive and the other dead. A large pine nearby provided a nice overhead anchor. It’s a really nice time of the year to be working in a mixed deciduous/conifer forest. The oak, dogwood and aspen are turning and beautiful.

10/29/2024

Almost finished this white fir before dark. It was a complicated tree with hazards in the forms of a home, highway 50, a pole-to-pole power line and a pole-to-home power line surrounding it on all sides. Additionally, the light, dry top had to be really small in order to keep it reaching back to the house when it hit strong live limbs and would inevitably spin off them. It was going to hang up, but the key was to make it small enough that it wouldn’t come back and reach the house.

05/22/2024

Take a picture. This is what good ground support looks like. When you call for the big saw and electrolytes in a peel come up with it.