Hope you're right FN. The older tree is certainly dying - all but 2 scaffolds died last year. But when I saw the tree next to it peeling bark so copiously, so much like the dying branches on the other tree, I began to worry.

Does this tree have any leaves on it? If it does, what is the condition of the leaves? Generally, peeling bark is a bad sign. If the bark can be easily peeled away from the entire circumference of the trunk, the tree is most likely dead and can be cut down. In fact, one way to deliberately kill a tree is to "girdle", or remove, the bark from around the trunk. I recently had a mulberry tree I wanted to get rid of, so I tried an experiment with it. I progressively stripped away the bark from around the trunk. To my surprise, though, this tree kept living in spite of the fact that I removed all the bark around the trunk except for one-half inch! That was enough to transport enough nutrients to keep the tree alive. When I finally cut this last half-inch inch, the tree died.

Contrary to everyone else, I think you're tree will be fine. That looks like a common winter injury or sunscald to me. Research it so you understand, but it's simply when the trunk of a tree heats up during winter days, possibly from reflections from snow, and then at night the temp of the trunk drops back down below freezing. Or it can happen from a few nights of freeze in the late spring. During these weather conditions tissue on the trunk dies, especially on the side where the wind comes from. This may have actually happen a year or two ago, because it looks to me that it has already started closing the wound. Do you see the swelling tissue around the perimeter of the wound? That is new wood and bark tissue growing to cover the wound. I live in zone 6 also, and this is somewhat common due to the winters here being back and forth between freezing and warm all winter. I have a red maple, an October glory maple, and a willow oak with the same type of winter injury, although not quite as big. And they have almost completely covered the injury and are doing fine. Personally, I think a lot of people here are too quick to say "dig it up and plant a new one". We tend to forget that these are trees. Over time they are going to get a few knots and injuries, it's impossible to grow a perfect, fully mature specimen. If every tree died from some sort of winter injury, we would not have any forests. When you invest money and years into a tree, you can't dig it out over every little thing. Give it another growing season, and if the foliage stays good all summer and you can see the new wood swelling over the edges of the injury, you'll be fine.

IMO, leans such as either tree shown in this thread are ultimately insignificant. There will be so much growth in various directions as to make it completely non-issue. OP, while it is admirable that you bothered to follow directions with the planting, those cards are just as often wrong as right. The usual "plant at same depth as in the pot" or whatever completely misses the point that the root flare, that zone of buttressed growth where roots diverge from trunk, is to be left visible upon completion. Since trees are dug in nursery rows after various cultivation practices have thrown soil up over what will be the root ball, that can be completely obscured. Also in potted stock, the plant may well have been placed too deeply into the pot at some point. So directions of that sort are virtually of no value. I always advise that when in doubt about the truth of this concept, people take a walk in the woods and perhaps for the first time in their lives, see how trees actually grow. They kind of sit on top of the ground. And yes, a too-deep planting surely can start a tree down the road to bark/stem abnormalities although as Ark also points out, we can't know for certain what caused this with yours. +oM