Today’s the day to lay down the ~90ft boardwalk. I finished building 6 more boardwalks during the week. Canvassed for volunteers to help with the installation and scored only one club member, Roy Fleming. It was going to be a big job and I wasn’t sure two of us could get it done in one day, so I planned on staying an extra day.
I got there before Roy and started hauling in boardwalks. Access to the singletrack and the work-site was just a short walk, so Roy didn’t need a bike or ATV. We hauled 5 of the 6 boardwalks in, reserving the last one in case it was needed. Then we stared at the site for awhile and decided how to get started. I’m guessing that Roy was a bit worried about the project getting done in one day because once we got started, he was relentless in keeping the job moving. The job required a fair amount of root chopping, root sawing and root removal. I was glad that I bought that cordless Makita Sawzall two years ago. It made getting through most of the roots a bunch easier. That, along with the ax and the chainsaw, took care of what needed to be taken care of.
It was lay one down, see what was needed, fool with roots and/or add treated wood supports, lay it down, figure it’s good and link it up with the previous unit…..one boardwalk after the other for 6 hours. In the end, 11 of them did the job. We looked down the row at what we did with satisfaction.
These newer-style boardwalks are narrower than any we had done in the past. We formerly made them 4ft wide so that we could ride an ATV across them, which helps when we’re going in to do maintenance. This time they were 32inches wide, which meant that my ATV only had one set of wheels on them when I drove across. So this crossing is no fun for your average ATV rider. We don’t seem to get any ATVs on this trail segment so it’s kind of a moot point.
The hard work got done on Saturday. I visited the site again on Sunday morning and spent a little over and hour driving in anchors to keep the thing in place over the shaky ground. Unfortunately, I didn’t have a bike and I didn’t see any bikes cross the thing, so I didn’t get a reading on how the update worked. I heard later that it was a welcome fix over an ugly part of the Corduroy.
I finished the morning by adding that last boardwalk to the chain we put in on June 13th. The day we put it in, that chain looked like it was one boardwalk short.