Bret Harte Forestry Club’s top team, comprised of seniors Brayden Bowersox, Cheyenne Stephens, and Pablo Carrillo-Wright, along with junior Dahlia Guillon, finished fourth in the sixth Forestry Challenge Championship that occurred this past weekend in Pinecrest. This is the first Bret Harte team to finish in the top five at the state competition.
There was a total of 24 teams from 16 high schools across California that qualified to compete in the championships. In October, this team finished first among 32 teams in the 2025 El Dorado Forestry Challenge in Grizzley Flats to qualify.
“This challenging focus topic provided the opportunity for our students to show their stuff,” shared advisor Mr. Castro. “Placing 4th in the entire state, these students honored Bret Harte and the burgeoning forestry program.”
Per Forestry Challenge organizers, “The focus topic was From Research to Application – Perpetuating Variable Density Forest Structure. Students learned about the role of research and how it influences land managers’ decisions when designing projects, described an example of that application in the SERAL project, and presented a plan to perpetuate complex stand structure in SERAL for recently created variable density stands.” Learn more at https://forestrychallenge.org.
See all results at https://forestrychallenge.org/2026-championship-summary. To learn more about the Bret Harte Forestry Club, email Mr. Castro at mcastro@bhuhsd.net.
Photo courtesy of Mr. Castro. Pictured, left to right, Castro, Bowersox, Stephens, Guillon, and Carrillo-Wright.
The following is a detailed summary of this past weekend’s El Dorado Forestry Challenge, courtesy of Mr. Castro.
“The Forestry Challenge Championship takes place in Pinecrest at Camp Sylvester. Preceding this, there are five regional events held across the state of California with 20-30 teams at each regional event. The top five teams from these five events move on to the championship event. This abbreviated competition is three days and two nights. The students complete a practical examination, similar to the regional event, and create a 20-minute presentation for the panel of professional forester judges. The focus topic this year was a variable density thinning study with data spanning over 100 years from our local STEF (Stanislaus-Tuolumne Experimental Forest) near Pinecrest.”