Frozen spruce make for extra dangerous woodcutting

Bucking a 44–inch–diameter Sitka spruce on the Tongass National Forest in 1991. (Courtesy U.S. Forest Service)
This first real cold snap in several years around Kodiak has got a local tree expert raising an alarm over tree cutting and log splitting. Dennis Symmons, a tree surgeon when he’s not tending to borough business as an assemblyman, says when the local Sitka Spruce tree freezes, it can become dangerous to handle.
“When it turns to plastic and peanut brittle from th