15/Dec/07: Environmental Education Center Lower Bridge

Photographs are provided at the bottom of this web page.

15/Dec/07: Environmental Education Center Lower Bridge

Greetings, everyone on the Internets!

It was another great day in the mountains! Well, actually today was kind of a strange day in that we didn't get done what we had originally set out to do.

Plan "A" was that we would head up to Windy Gap Trail and put some more large boulders on the top of the retaining wall that so many volunteers had developed the last two outings we had however after driving up we found that there was too much snow to make working on the wall as safe as we normally like.

So we packed up, implemented plan "B" and then headed back down the mountain to the Environmental Education Center and worked on the bridge footing for the new lower bridge that is slowly going in.

This was fun! We had two young volunteers who did the heavy boulder moving using a grip hoist while the rest of us carted concrete dogbones (60 pounds each) around, shoveled gravel, and basically had fun digging up the previous footing, laying it back down, picking it up again, and laying it down again.

Tom wants the bridge to be as level flat as possible and yet these old concrete dogbones we're using up there have different geometrics. The lengths are generally all about the same however the width and depth as well as the roughness or smoothness of each bone are different, apparently depending upon when they were made and who made them.

So our engineering team (that would be Tom and Mike) measured, laid down bones, measured, picked up bones, measured, laid down bones, measured... Ha! I got to sit on a pile of dogbones, relax, and enjoy the day while the rest played with the geometry of the stack that must meet the highest standards of perfection!

So it was another great day in the San Gabriel River Ranger District, volunteering in the Angeles Forest.