Dear Editor,

We are so blessed. Last weekend, our small cabin was included in the wildfire mitigation efforts on Copperdale Lane in Coal Creek Canyon.

This was a combined effort with crews from Saws and Slaws and Project Rubicon in the field working hard on record-setting hot days. Others involved in the effort were Boulder Watershed Collective, Boulder Wildfire Partners, Jeffco SLASH, and the CCCIA. We had thinned over the years as standing dead lodgepoles showed up, but we had four major piles of slash and large branches left behind at the bottom of a very steep hill. These amazing folks dragged all those big piles up that hill BY SLED, all the way up to Copperdale Lane and CHIPPED THEM ALL!!! Then they blasted through the forest, taking out dead trees on our neighbors’ lands on all sides, leaving only tidy piles of timber to give to folks who may need firewood.

If our cabin survives “the big one” that is probably in our future, it will be because of these wonderful, giving, hard-working “community members” who blessed us with their efforts. We are so very grateful.

Bill Thibedeau

Gilpin County