Measuring a big Cedar

So today Chiyoko, Martin & I headed out to measure the Larch Mountain Giant Cedar & see if it came close to the current State champion. Big trees are measured & compared on a point system, in a nutshell they get 1 point for each inch of circumference, 1 point for each foot of height & a quarter point for each foot of average canopy spread. Firstly we worked on getting a circumference measurement, we used a DBH tape that's calibrated to give you both circumference & diameter measurements without having to do any mathematics! This measurement should be taken at 4.5' if anything we were a little high so our circumference measurement is conservative. We got a circumference of 34' 2" & a diameter of 10' 9". Next we worked on getting a height measurement. We ran a tape out 150' then sited it in to the base of the tree & Martin used his clinometer to get a height reading. We also used the stick method to get a height reading and the 2 readings were within a foot of each other. We calculated 160' to the top of the highest dead leader & 134' to the highest living branch. Finally canopy, we took 2 measurements at 180 degrees from each other to get the canopy spread of the tree, these were then averaged together to give us an average canopy spread of 60'. So when we total up the points we get 410 for calliper, 160 for height & 15 for canopy for a total of 585. The current State Champion has 626 points so we didn't break the record but came close :^).....