Set in the foreground near Moscow Mountain sits the Franklin H. Pitkin Forest Nursery, part of the College of Natural Resources Center for Forest Nursery and Seedling Research. There, on most Saturday mornings, you will find a dedicated group of students and alumni committed to one thing: the sport of cutting wood.
As the University of Idaho’s second oldest athletic club, the UI Logger Sports Club, led by mechanical engineering major and team captain Paul Riebe accommodates for a strong niche of athletes from very diverse backgrounds who have been affected by the cancelation of campus-wide activity.
Last fall, the team was gifted pumpkins from Soil Stewards Student Farm, a university ran farm in Moscow, for their annual fall show, which brings together collegiate logger athletes from all over the Pacific Northwest.
“The pumpkins were just decoration for most of the day, but every year we run a relay race that includes about five different events, and I incorporated pumpkin smashing into each one,” Riebe said.
This year, however, the fall event did not take place because of social distancing.
That is not the teams only challenge during these strange times, however. Under normal circumstances, the club would obtain its wood from one of the university’s eight experimental forest units, who usually donates wood to the team for them to practice and to sell. COVID-19 wasn’t the main issue for the team to source their wood from the experimental forest units, but the team adapted by logging from neighboring national forests, navigating switchbacks in a converted F-600 flatbed from the 1970’s they purchased in Lewiston for an estimated $500.
“Normally, we get plenty of cull logs from the UI Experimental forest,” Riebe said. “We didn’t get any this year, and so we’ve been retrieving our own. Last year we sold 42 cords of firewood, to whom we owe Sam Bruneel all the credit.”
The team’s primary source of income is the sale of wood to local community members who use it to heat their homes in the winter. On average, the team sells about 30 cords of firewood per season.
“The competition aspect can halt for a year but getting firewood to locals in town—we have to,” Sam Bruneel, the team’s wood boss, said.
Going into the forest on a wood run also means limited communication to the outside world.
“On wood runs, we all have walkie talkies that we banter on, but cell service is usually nonexistent,” Riebe said.
If there is a life-threatening injury on a run, the team must rely on themselves to get each other to help. Some team members have basic first aid and CPR training and a trauma kit for severe injuries, but the Gritman Medical Center is far away to apply treatment quickly. Injuries are rare, however, and the team strongly encourages proper safety measures, both on wood runs and during practice and competition.
The change to the wood sourcing process is still new to the team, who have been accustomed to the experimental forest providing wood.
“We are still fresh to this, so we are trying to get our systems figured out, how many people we need to bring, how many people, minimum, do we need to have up there to get us going,” Bruneel said.
Courtesy
The team is continuing to modify the details regarding manpower and logistics but are exceling at it so far. Recruiting members has also proven to be challenging for the team this year.
“We are basically telling these stories about all these colleges coming together, and then we all have this big get together after the competition,” Bruneel said. “You get to meet other people from other walks of life. It’s a little hard to explain that to them because they’re not going to experience that.”
Membership retention is an issue that faces many of the student ran organizations on campus under normal circumstances and made worse with the addition of COVID-19. For the logging team, many students have expressed interest this year which means the team will survive.
The team is uncertain about the status of upcoming competitions but meets around a warm firepit most Saturday mornings to practice and most Friday evenings to cut firewood, regardless of the pandemic limitations. For more information on the logging team, or to sign up to compete in the events, visit the logger sports page on the UI Recreation and Wellbeing website, under Sports Clubs.
Richard Lasiw can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter @Argo_Rich.