Buffalo Creek – The vaulted ceiling in Mike Yates’ home needs a paint job to cover the scuffs of Christmas trees past.
But the Elizabeth contractor couldn’t help himself, and once again Sunday he cut down a spruce that will barely fit into the house.
“I was going to go small this year,” he said, panting from carrying his 25-footer up a hill and gesturing to his family, “but they kept egging me on.”
In the span of three weeks, about 25,000 people will drive past the lots selling pre-cut trees in town for a chance to pick their own out of Pike National Forest.
It was cold Sunday – jaw- piercing, ice-cream-headache- from-a-single-deep-breath cold.
And the work can be backbreaking, but for thousands, Christmas just isn’t Christmas without cutting their own tree.
“It’s the experience of it,” said Kris Heiny, a spokesman for the U.S. Forest Service. “You can buy a tree in Denver a lot easier. It will probably be a thicker tree, and you won’t have to be out here and freeze to get it.
“But it is the jocularity, the jovialness of the people and the experience that makes this the best.”
Hundreds of cars lined the roads Sunday near a 13-mile stretch of Colorado 126 as Christmas lumberjacks searched for the perfect tree.
The name of Clark Griswold – the hapless father played by Chevy Chase in the movie “National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation” who wrestled with a gargantuan Christmas tree – is commonly invoked.
“I’m surprised there are still trees,” said Char Ferguson, who watched the evergreen-topped cars drive by all day at the Deckers Country Store nearby. “They’ll be coming by all day. A lot of people make a whole day of it.”
Like a tailgate party in the woods, families gathered around grilling hot dogs and cupped steaming mugs with both hands.
Crowds came in such numbers at the junction of Colorado 126 and Forest Road 550 that Smokey Bear was manning a Forest Service tent, posing for pictures.
“This is the busiest I’ve seen it,” said Marc Psaltis of Parker after a drive down 550, a dirt road where traffic moved like pine sap. “Usually, there are half as many cars.”
The Forest Service limits the number of tree-cutting permits. The $10 permits for the area near Buffalo Creek are sold out.
Permits are still available in areas near Fort Collins, Colorado Springs and Fraser, with cutting deadlines different in each area.
Heiny said the cutting helps the forests.
“We’re also getting some really good forest management,” he said.
“The tree that most people pick out, the Douglas fir, causes some of the big fires,” he said. “It just works out for everybody.”
The Psaltis and Yates families have come to the forest together for years. Sunday, the group of 11 headed into the woods swaddled in winter clothes, armed with saws and an armada of sleds carrying children.
Trees – their size, thickness and potential weight – dominated the conversation.
But Jennifer Psaltis comes every year and has never removed a tree. She prefers plastic.
“I just consider it a family day, part of Christmas,” she said.
With 30 minutes and all feeling in his toes gone, Mike Yates pointed out a tree.
Everybody else thought he was joking. He wasn’t – regardless of scuffs on the ceiling.
Smiling, he said, “This is going to put Chevy Chase to shame.”
Staff writer George Merritt can be reached at 720-929-0893 or gmerritt@denverpost.com.
