CIPRESEROS DEL BAKER

Pobladores Lautaro and Bernardo prepare all the necessary to stay weeks in the mountains to obtain cipres posts. Slaughter an animal, make “tortas” (fried bread), load the “pilcheros” (horses for load) with food, sleeping covers, chainsaw and fuel, and go up the mountain along a steep path where is camp, a “rancho” built with logs and plastic. We stayed one week there logging the posts and going back to eat and sleep at the rancho.

Cipres posts are very valued because of their duration of more than a hundred years in the outdoors. Is one of the first productive activities in the Baker territory, beginning in 1905. Pobladores cut the dead trees, which then are arranged with the chainsaw to leave them with the measure needed and clean without the bark. Posts are then pulled with a horse or carried by hand, distances that are further every time because of the longer distances posts are found. Posts are then thrown down the mountain… titanic labour when there are hundreds of them. Once down the mountain, posts are pulled by a sled which is pulled by oxen to the shore of the Baker River.

With the posts, rope, special knots and an extraordinary skill, pobladores build a raft. Once finalized, they load it with wood, firewood and everything they need to transport and then pull and maneuver it with a motor boat down the strong waters of the río Baker to take it to the buyer.