Burning on the South Mountain Game Lands

A few weeks ago we went down to Rutherford County and assisted, along with other crews from the region, the Morganton crew with a prescribed burn on the South Montain game lands.
Chip, the Morganton crew leader, stands watch while the fire slowly backs thru this cutover section.

And here, Mark, the crew leader of the Waynesville crew, takes care of some fire that is creeping into the firelane.

Later on, Mark got a torch and was lighting the fire. When he got to this spot we had to watch carefully as it began throwing alot of heat and smoke over the firelane.


Meanwhile, the guys watching the other side of the fire on the upper firelane had their hands full with multiple spotovers. Two dozers were running constantly trying to get other firelanes installed to stop the fire that had gotten "out". Luckily they were able to do so and the spotovers were contained.

From where we were it was easy to see why they were having problems on top. Tis fire was burning hot and it was putting up an amazing amount of smoke, so much so that I couldn't get it all in one picture!

It didn't take long and we hit a spot on our firelane where the wind began throwing embers below the line and we started getting spotovers of our own. You can see the road which served as the firelane at the top of the picture. The burn was above the firelane and as you can obviously see, it got below it. We were able to get it out fairly quickly.

Even with the few spotovers, it was a very successful burn!

Pond Removal Project (2)

The second day of the project began by firing up the pump again to get the water level down even further.
It didn't take long to get the water down as low as we could get it with the pump.


Most of this second day consisted of moving earth. Jay had to dig down and build himself a "pad" so he could maneuver the trackhoe to a lower level to enable him to reach down deeper. Many, many tons of dirt had to be removed, so we began to stockpile the dirt a short distance away from the pond site.
Once Jay completed the pad it was time for him to move down lower to try to reach the existing blocked culvert. This meant the dirt he then dug was placed where he was previously sitting.

After enough dirt was moved, he came back up to the upper level to load the trucks again. After several trips doing this and moving around to try to dig deeper, a small mishap occurred.

The trackhoe was stuck! It wasn't a bad problem however. We simply used the dozer to winch the hoe back out. You can see the dozer's winch cable in the video.


Day 2 was a very productive day and we were able to get alot of dirt moved and were much closer to placing the new culvert, which will be posted in the future.

Pond Removal Project

Due to a dam problem on one of our ponds on the game lands, we were tasked with the duty of removing the pond. Work began about 3 weeks ago.

After meeting with representatives from other "in-agency" divisions, a plan was formulated to address this problem. The water would have to be drained from the pond so we could get equipment in to dig down to the old culvert, it would have to be removed, and a new, larger culvert installed.


As you can see, there is quite alot of water coming down out of this watershed. Not only do we need to drain the pond, but we have to have a pump that is capable of keeping up with this kind of flow. So, Mike and Jim made a trip to the Butner Wildlife Management Depot to pick up one of their pumps.

The pump had to be backed into the pond and it's 12 inch diameter discharge hoses hooked up. With a pump this size, it didn't take long for the water level to start dropping. By the end of day 1, and after moving the pump multiple times, about half of the pond had been drained.
We were assisted in that first week by Jay Glenn(boating tech. II) and John Macemore(boating tech. supervisor) from our Engineering Services division of the Wildlife Resources Commission. Once the pond had been drained to it's current level, Jay was able to "breach" the existing dam down to the water level so it would continue to flow out at the level we had pumped it down to so the pump wouldn't have to run over night.

After a nice long 12 hour first day on the project, we were all more than ready to head home.

This particular project proved to take longer than any of us had expected and there is much more to tell and show you. Check back later for more updates on this project.