Bridges are his Business: Jim Carnahan is the sole bridge inspector for the Wallowa-Whitman, Umatilla and Malheur national forests

Oct. 21—GRANITE — Jim Carnahan's job is to inspect bridges, but he's hacking at this one with the sharp end of a geologist's hammer and inflicting deep wounds.

Carnahan appears intent on dismantling this single-log structure spanning a wilderness stream.

But all is not as it seems.

His purpose is not to destroy, but to investigate.

In the case of this log bridge over Lake Creek, in the North Fork John Day Wilderness, Carnahan is digging at the log to figure out how deep the layer of soft, rotted wood extends.

Carnahan, who's been a professional engineer for 48 years and worked for the Forest Service for 13, has hiked into the canyon of Granite Creek to assess the condition of this bridge and three others along the trail.

He has come on an October morning that pretty much epitomizes the notion of a flawless autumn day.

The sky is free of clouds, the breeze scarcely able to ruffle the frail leaves of trailside snowberry, the temperature as comfortable as an old sweater softened by many washings.

The scenery in this remote canyon is the sort that thrills photographers who work in the large formats of calendars and coffee table books.

But Carnahan isn't marveling at the tamaracks beginning to blaze yellow, or pondering the crystalline water of Granite Creek as it hurries along to its meeting with the North Fork John Day River.

This is Carnahan's office, and he has tasks to complete.

His tools are a decidedly curious lot.

In the span of a few minutes Carnahan wields, with equal dexterity, a pencil, a pair of loppers capable of chomping finger-thick red osier dogwood branches with a satisfying clunk, the aforementioned hammer, and a palm-size digital camera of the sort rarely seen since the ubiquity of the smartphone.

Although Carnahan attends to his business with the precision that marks his profession, this is not to suggest that the 71-year-old, who grew up in Eagle Valley, doesn't appreciate that his view is forest and stream rather than cubicle and painted walls.

"This is my dream job," he says with a smile.

Carnahan, who earned his engineering degree from Oregon State University and also served for four years in the Marine Corps, said he never imagined, while sitting in a classroom in Corvallis, that one day, decades later, his job would require him to traverse some of Oregon's wildest, and most scenic, country.

"I had no idea you could get paid to ride a horse along the Minam River to inspect a bridge," he said. "I never expected that to happen."

A late, unanticipated career change

But his good fortune, as it sometimes does, began with a decidedly unpleasant episode.

Carnahan lost his job.

It was 2008, and the Great Recession was wreaking havoc on the economy in Central Oregon, where Carnahan had worked as a civil engineer for 31 years.

"I was 58 when I was laid off," he said. "I thought, who's going to hire a 58-year-old engineer with marginal computer skills?"

The answer came, curiously enough, in the form of Christmas cookies.

A friend from Eagle Valley brought the cookies to Carnahan's parents' home in Baker City. Carnahan's mom told the friend that her son had been laid off, and the friend mentioned that the Forest Service was looking to hire two engineers locally.

One of those intrigued Carnahan.

The job was bridge engineer — the only bridge engineer — for the whole of the Blue Mountains, consisting of the Wallowa-Whitman, Umatilla and Malheur national forests.

Carnahan, thanks in part, he said, to his veteran status, got the job.

And more than half a century after he graduated as valedictorian of the Class of 1969 at Pine Eagle High School in Halfway, he returned to Baker County.

(Carnahan attended Eagle Valley High School in Richland as a freshman and sophomore, and moved to the high school in Halfway when

the school districts consolidated.)

And suddenly Carnahan was responsible for about 320 bridges — roughly half along roads, half on trails — distributed over about 6.1 million acres ranging from Heppner in the west, Hells Canyon to the east, from near Burns in the south to Dayton, Washington, in the north.

"A lot of geography," Carnahan said.

And a lot of inspections — around 80 bridges per year, based on a typical interval of four years between visits (there are exceptions, about which more later).

Given the region's climate, Carnahan does most of his

inspections from spring through fall.

During the winter he swaps his loppers and backpack for a computer keyboard, turning his handwritten field notes into formal reports.

He has no ambivalence about which season he prefers.

"Summers," he said, "are great."

Getting to road bridges is, of course, comparatively easy.

Trail bridges, by contrast, range from a few minutes' walk from Carnahan's pickup truck, to more than a day's horseback ride or hike through the Eagle Cap Wilderness, Oregon's biggest at 365,000 acres.

Into the wilderness

Carnahan's destination on the morning of Oct. 18 lands about the middle on the scale of difficulty and distance.

The four bridges on his itinerary are all within the North Fork John Day Wilderness, where only hikers and horseback riders can go.

But the hike is about 7 miles round trip and the terrain, by Blue Mountains standards, is moderate.

The thermometer on the display of Carnahan's white Forest Service Ford truck shows 23 degrees as he turns off the Elkhorn Scenic Byway at Granite and heads west along Granite Creek.

He parks at the trailhead, calls in his location to a Forest Service radio dispatcher, checks his gear in a small daypack, dons a pair of gloves and grabs the loppers.

Clad in Wrangler jeans and wearing a straw cowboy hat, he strides down the trail at a pace as brisk as the air.

Carnahan is hiking today but he often travels trails in the saddle. This is as natural to him as walking. He grew up on a cattle ranch that's still in his family, and after going about three decades without sitting a horse, he was pleased to return to Baker County and a new job where horses are almost as useful as pickups.

Whether hiking or riding, Carnahan said he enjoys inspecting trail bridges more than road bridges for a simple reason — working in the deep woods hardly feels like work.

His first stop, about 2 miles from the trailhead, is one of two wooden bridges that cross Granite Creek.

It is a substantial structure, 72 feet long including the ramps on either end. Those connect to the main span across the stream, which is higher above the water than the previous bridge to protect it from spring snowmelt floods.

Carnahan said this bridge, and its downstream twin, were both built in 2010. The materials were brought in by helicopter.

The bridge is anchored on both banks by gabions — thick metal mesh rectangles filled with native stones.

Because this bridge is relatively new and in good shape, Carnahan said he inspects it every five years. His last visit was Sept. 28, 2017.

Before he examines the structure and takes a series of photos to document any changes since that last inspection, Carnahan uses the loppers to go after the hip-high dogwoods growing near the bridge, along with a couple of fledgling spruces.

"Brush cutting is a big part of my job," he said. "I usually go through a pair of loppers every season."

The risk here is roots.

Carnahan said trees and brush, if left alone, can eventually thrust roots into the bridge approaches and weaken them. Branches can also obstruct trail users, particularly horses.

Carnahan said this bridge, made of rot-resistant Port Orford cedar, is likely to last at least 40 years — and quite possibly decades longer.

The Lake Creek log bridge, about a mile down the canyon and just upstream from the stream's confluence with Granite Creek, is a decidedly different matter.

Forest Service records estimate it was built in 1976, and its condition betrays its age.

"There is the good, bad and ugly — this is bad and ugly," Carnahan said.

But not so bad that it needs to be condemned.

Although Carnahan excises a considerable amount of rotted wood, some of it as soft as al dente pasta, he said the bridge is in no imminent danger of collapsing.

If it were, he'd string plastic flagging on the bridge and deem it officially closed.

Carnahan figures the bridge, which is 52 feet long, likely will last three more years before it needs to be replaced.

The advantage of this type of bridge, he said, is its simplicity. The builders, likely a Forest Service crew, didn't need a helicopter to hoist timbers and metal hardware. They just felled a nearby tree — probably a tamarack or Douglas-fir, by its girth — used a chain saw to cut off the top and create a flat surface, and attached a rudimentary rail on the downstream side.

Horses, of course, can't negotiate a single log bridge.

But Carnahan said this type of bridge was appropriate here because there's a good ford for stock animals just upstream.

Although there are many types of trail bridges in the Blue Mountains, ranging from simple ones like the Lake Creek bridge to stout concrete structures, Carnahan said about 40% of the bridges are made of wood and are more than 50 years old.

Because some of those bridges are somewhat deteriorated — if not as badly, in many cases, as the Lake Creek bridge — many are inspected either every other year or, occasionally, yearly, Carnahan said.

He pointed out that for most trail bridges, the heaviest load they ever bear is neither people nor stock, but rather winter snow.

Which means that if a bridge does fail, it's most likely to do so in winter when the chances of a person being on the bridge are negligible.

The last bridge

The final bridge on Carnahan's itinerary for the day is the longest and fanciest. The bridge, built in 1985, spans the North Fork John Day River. It has a steel support structure with a wooden decking.

There is one obvious difference between this bridge and the two over Granite Creek. Those are made of untreated wood, while the North Fork John Day bridge lumber is treated with a protectant.

The difference, Carnahan said, is that in 1985 the Forest Service's Northwest Region had yet to impose a ban on treated lumber in river bridges. That requirement took effect before 2010, when the Granite Creek bridges were built.

Although the North Fork bridge is a quarter century older, it's still quite solid. The metal support structure sustained minor damage, probably in 1997 as a result of flotsam on the snowmelt-swollen river smashing into the girders.

It's difficult to compare that raging version of the North Fork with the clear stream flowing on a fine October day, the water scarcely knee-high in most places. Carnahan uses a tape measure to gauge the distance between the water and the bottom of the bridge — 8.5 feet.

The other thing Carnahan notes is chunks missing from a section of rail on the bridge. He puts this down to animals, most likely bears, gnawing on the wood.

He's seen similar damage on other bridges.

Carnahan sits on the south end of the bridge and digs a sandwich from his pack.

The sunshine is so warm that the frosty air just a few hours ago seems as improbable as the North Fork in flood, its water the color of chocolate milk.

Carnahan has been following the weather forecast.

Rain and snow are supposed to move in over the weekend. Soon his field season — his favorite season — will end, and he'll swap his boots and saddle for an office chair.

But for now he has only the hike back to the truck to contemplate. That, and the reality that on 6.1 million acres there will always be other days, other trails, other bridges.

"I think we're done here," he said, cinching down his pack.

He walks toward the sun.