Storm Damage at the Bolt Hole

Terry and I drove from the Aerie to the Bolt Hole today to pick up the trailer for PA inspection. As we drove the last two miles to the cabin, we noticed many trees blown over by the storm of two weeks ago. When we got to our gate, we noticed things were pretty bad. Mark had cleaned up most of the huge cherry that once stood at the gate but there was still some clean up to do.

This very old cherry stood at the gate of my driveway at the Bolt Hole. The winds two weeks ago snapped it at about 10 feet above the ground. The trunk had a rotten core. This 50-60 foot tall tree had many dead branches in its crown that served as resting sites for hawks and other birds. It measured close to 24 inches in diameter where it broke off but had many, many cankers in its upper branches. A similar tree a short distance away also fell before the winds.

Besides cutting a couple of blocks off one end of the trunk so we could handle it more easily, we did very little with this particular tree. That’s because there were a couple of others that we needed to remove so we could get the trailer out of the yard and, eventually, back into the barn.

A pair of smaller trees lay across the lawn.

A much younger pair of cherry trees in front of the garage were split by the winds. Each forked trunk of the pair split in half sending these 25-foot long trunks across the lawn. Each measures about 9 inches in diameter where they split. The two that are still standing will have to come down next spring.

While Terry hauled smaller branches to the side of the yard, I fired up the chainsaw to make sure she had plenty to do. After two hours we felt we had succeeded in making a clear path for the trailer. So we attached the charger to the trailer’s battery and took a walk in the woods to see if there had been any other damage. There were a few blow downs visible but we didn’t explore very thoroughly as there was a threat of showers. (They arrived just as we got back to the safety of the cabin.)