In the course of two years, a natural apocalypse descended on the spruce forests near Tok.
First, the Eagle Trail Fire blazed through in 2010, scorching 18,000 acres in just a few days.
Then, hurricane-force winds of a freakishly strong storm in September 2012 blew down more trees, many already so weakened by the fire they toppled like dominoes.
Now, the Alaska Division of Forestry is offering a large salvage timber sale on state land 8 to 20 miles from Tok, covering about 5,800 acres. The agency earlier this month issued a preliminary best-interest finding for several sales totaling 10.7 million board feet of timber -- all of it burned in the fire and blown down in the storm.
Foresters say the sale gives the state a chance to clean up what's become a partly horizontal forest of downed and damaged trees.
The forest within the sale area is like a jungle gym: impossible to move through without climbing, according to Jeff Hermanns, the state's forester for the Tok area. When a fire last year burned through part of the area, even airdrops of water or retardant struggled to penetrate the blowdown.
"Virtually no trees are standing vertically. Anything that was green, islands of green trees, are still jackstrawed," Hermanns said. "They're bent over. The tops are blown out. It's a tangle of vegetation … it's hard to describe how difficult it is to walk through there."
State officials say current conditions make for dangerous fire hazards and state lands largely inaccessible to the public for recreation and hunting. They say the sale will reduce fire danger, make for better moose forage, and supply firewood to feed the depressed economy and energy-hungry communities of the upper Tanana River.
Given additional risk from beetles and decay, the state's preliminary best interest finding categorizes the salvage activity as emergency sales that need to be expedited "to avoid loss of market value," according the document.
A public comment period closes Dec. 10. The state will issue a final best-interest finding later.
The sale is a big one for the Interior. Foresters say it could provide enough wood for 10 years of contracts though observers say the downed trees won't last that long, at least for milling.
Plans call for the construction of 54 miles of winter road and more than eight miles of all-season road, mostly off existing access points at Moon Lake State Campground and Eagle Trail, the main access into the Tanana Valley State Forest. Special provisions avoid trespass on adjacent Tanacross Inc. lands. The state is also paying access fees to the Alaska Native village corporation.
Hermanns estimates about 70 percent of the salvage sale will go to firewood suppliers feeding the lucrative Fairbanks market but also selling around Tok and Copper River communities from Eureka to Valdez. A log truck load of wood could fetch $3,500 in Fairbanks, he said. Maybe 15 or 20 percent could supply logs for local mills.
But first, any buyers will have to figure out how to get to the logistically challenging sale site.
Roughly three-quarters of the sale area sits across the Tanana River -- and there's no bridge to get there. Getting logging equipment and people to the area will involve crossing a fast-moving section of the river that notoriously resists freezing. A log truck needs 40 inches of ice to safely get across.
Forestry tries to help things along wherever the ice starts freezing first, Hermanns said.
"We have this auger on the end of a half-inch cordless drill," he said. "We look at where it looks like the river is building ice the best. Then we go out and pump water up and spray it on top and build the ice up."
The hillside logging and generally remote location of the sale, plus its distance from larger markets like Fairbanks, could put off bidders as well.
Brad Cox, a co-owner of Logging and Milling Associates LLC, said his company does most of its logging around Delta rather than near Tok, where it operates a mill and probably won't submit a bid.
The company is busy with a few other timber sales now, and the sale is "viable" but a long way from good markets, Cox said. The wood itself is also better suited for fuel than milling.
"Tok's a tough place. If you're making a finished product, then it's easier, any kind of value-added product," he said, using an industry term for house logs or milled lumber. "That wood's only going to last so long, then it's going to become fuel wood."
At least one other company closer to the sale is pretty excited about it, though.
Christian Crozier owns Interior Raw Fuel, a Tok company that supplies firewood from Eagle to Eureka. He hasn't taken a hard look at the preliminary finding, but thinks his company could handle a contract for about 800 acres.
With its river crossing and downed trees, the sale will prove "challenging" but doable for the company Crozier uses for roadbuilding and harvesting, he said.
Logging equipment is built to cut down standing trees, "not a lying-down tree or a criss-cross tree or multiple criss-cross trees," Crozier said. "It's like pick-up sticks."
Timber salvage sales like this one can draw criticism in the Lower 48 when they come after fires and with the stated goal of reducing fire danger. Fire ecologists say it can be tricky to log for fire reduction, because commercial logging usually removes the biggest trees that tend to be the most fire-resistant and also tends to increase the so-called fine fuels -- needles, branches -- that turn into fire-starting tinder in dry conditions.
Several environmental groups in Anchorage and Fairbanks said they weren't tracking this sale, however.
The Tok sale is different, Hermanns said. Most of what burned were fine fuels. The core of the trees were left behind.
If successful, this salvage sale should help reset the forest and clear out the tangle of limbs and trees that now pose a fire hazard and block moose from feeding, he said.
The sale could pump some much-needed income into the area and firewood into surrounding markets, Hermanns said.
"In the forest now, it's worth zero," he said. "But to go harvest a load onto a truck and get it to Fairbanks, you've put $3,500 per log truck into the local economy."