The mitigation pile: what to clear, what to move, and how to get it gone

Where this applies

The Front Range foothills carry real wildfire exposure, and so do the wooded areas north and east of the city. In practice that means the west side above Manitou and Old Colorado City, Rockrimmon and Mountain Shadows, the Broadmoor and Cheyenne Mountain hillsides, up Ute Pass to Woodland Park, and the ponderosa acreage of Black Forest and the Monument side. If your lot has scrub oak, pine, a slope and a view, this is you.

What is in a mitigation pile

• Scrub oak cut back from the house, which regrows and is cut again.
• Lower limbs pruned from pines and firs to remove ladder fuels, and dead or dying trees dropped.
• Dead needles, cones and branches raked from under the eaves, the deck and along the foundation.
• Brush and grass cut from the defensible space around the house.

What else should go on the same truck

The point of mitigation is to move combustible material away from the structure, and the brush is only half of it. The other half is stored: the lumber stack against the garage, the old fence sections behind the shed, the firewood under the deck, the pallets, the wooden patio furniture that died, the shed itself if it is rotten and leaning on the house. People cut the brush and forget the woodpile. The crew takes both on one trip, and the lumber is usually the lighter part of the load.

How the pile is priced

Brush is bulky but light, so it is priced by volume, and a crew can compress a great deal of branch into a truck. A typical lot's spring cut is half a truck to a full one. Logs, root balls and soil are heavy and priced by weight; if the pile has both, the crew loads so each is charged honestly. Chipped material is faster to load than whole limbs. See the brush and slash page for the table.

Timing

The dry season here runs nearly eight months, September into late April, and the snowy period ends in April. Most people cut in April, May and early June, after the snow and before the summer heat and the PCS rush, and that is when the trucks are busiest on the foothills side. Book the haul when you book the cut, or the day after you plan to cut it yourself.

What we are not

We do not cut standing trees, prune, or assess your lot; an arborist or forestry professional does that. We do not claim any programme, grant, certification or partnership, and we won't advise you on any. We are the truck that makes the pile and the woodpile disappear, and we give you a dated receipt for whatever you need it for.

Asked often

Also read: Black Forest · Brush and slash · Woodland Park