Standing tall
Alan Lane, a forestry technician with the Three Rivers Ranger District in Troy, uses a logger's tape to measure the circumference of one of the state's largest recorded western white pine trees along the Yaak River in this 2008 file photo. (Karen Nichols/Daily Inter Lake)
Champion trees can be found throughout Northwest corner of state
Northwest Montana is home to many of the state's most impressive champion trees. Of the 59 champion trees listed on the 2006 register, 28 of them reside in Lincoln, Sanders and Flathead counties.
Alan Lane, a U.S. Forest Service forest technician, has registered nine of Lincoln County's 18 top trees.
After logging throughout the 1970s, an accident took one of Lane's arms. He started working for the Forest Service in 1981 doing stand exams and tree inventory.
"I was measuring all types of trees and working in all kinds of country," Lane said.
His work put him in contact with a lot of large trees. He noticed a tree chart showing champion trees in Montana and began comparing them to some of the trees he had found.
"We have some big ones up here," Lane said.
A western red cedar that Lane found in 1998 is the second-largest champion tree in the state. The tree has a height of 178 feet and is 362 inches in diameter.
His find came close to toppling Bruce Miehe's western red cedar, which was listed in 1981. Miehe's tree is 26 feet shorter, but the circumference is nearly 40 inches larger.
The trees are ranked according to a points system that adds the circumference, height and one-quarter of the crown's average spread. Trees within 15 points of each other are listed as co-champions. Lane's tree scored a 544, and Miehe's trees comes in at 555 points.
Some people have a passion for searching for trophy trees, but Lane's approach is much more casual. If his line of work brings him to a large tree, he records it, but he doesn't specifically look for them.
"I just came across them," he said. "You develop an eye for it. It's not really part of my job to find trophy trees."
Years often go by before Lane will revisit a champion tree site. At least two of his registered trees have blown down, including his first listing.
In 1994, someone tipped him off to a massive grand fir, and Lane found the tree, measured it and submitted it for the registry.
The grand fir had a height of 168 feet and a circumference of 194 inches.
Lane doesn't take core samples from the trees so determining their age is difficult. Plus, many of the large western red cedars rot internally, which would make counting rings impossible.
"A lot of them aren't as old as you think," Lane said. "They are just growing on a good site."
Still, it takes about 300 years for a tree in Montana to get really large according to Jane Adams, a former wildlife biologist for the Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation. Adams is president of the Montana Old Growth Project.
Adams said that most of the largest trees in the state have been cut down in spite of their ecological importance.
Old growth provides large branches, which are stable nesting platforms for eagles along with dense thermal cover for deer and elk. Pileated woodpeckers, wood ducks, boreal owls and pine marten all use the large cavities provided by old growth as home sites.
Small mammals dwell in the root systems of large trees.
When Lane's grand fir fell to the ground, it became habitat for plants and animals as well as providing nutrient recycling for the overall health of the forest.
A comprehensive list of Montana's trophy trees is available online at http://www.championtrees.org/champions/MTBigTrees.htm