Hello again Nathaniel Brody. Trail supervisor with Columbia River Gorge
National Scenic Area here on the Horsetail Falls Trail which
was initially put through as you can see
above me some pretty steep uh basalt cliffs and a couple of about 20 feet
below me there's another series of steep basalt cliffs.
Between those series of cliffs there's a really really steep
50 percent more a crude alluvium slope.
So all the loose talus rock from above falls down, piles up into a big steep
loose scree slope. Back in sometime maybe
the 30s or 40s the Civilian Conservation Corps came through and
cut a trail through that slope because of the Eagle Creek fire and the
subsequent landslide we had. We're now having to abandon this nice
bench that they built for us and we are cutting a new trail a
re-route up to the base of the cliffs through the
eluvium again and one way we can do that
is pick out the rocks and create a trail
to keep the rocks from falling onto our new trail.
We'll have to construct a series of retaining walls
to hold that series of rocks back. One thing I like about trails you use
the materials that you have on hand. Here we have a lot of loose not very big
chunky basalt rocks which aren't the best building material but nonetheless
this crew member built a pretty good wall.
Leaning back into the trail pretty tight contact
breaking the joints and this is called a dry laid stone retaining wall
because we're not using mortar. We don't want to haul the concrete all the way up
here. It's expensive, it's heavy,
and one thing I like about this it looks more natural the water can weep out of
it. The concrete tends to hold the hydrostatic pressure behind it.
It'll break out this wall will shift and settle as
the hill itself shifts and settles looks a lot more natural
and then as you can see that this the initial part of the re-route.
We built a pretty uh it's a little steep at first
um and so we built a series of stone steps.
Again this is kind of a work in progress. We're going to get rid of this
berm on the outside so it doesn't look so trenched,
but this is one way of ascending up some steep slope
as much as possible we want to keep the grade level
10 to 15% range but every once in a while we have to build a series of stairs or
ascend a steep section of hill because that's
what the land dictates. Here we are in the Horsetail Falls
re-route again. This is still a work in progress.
Still building an outside retaining wall to hold up the actual tread of the trail
um and then on the inside we built another retaining wall
to hold up this switchback corner, again dry laid stone
stacking. No mortar um and we have a nice big turning radius.
Here the reason we want to have a switchback
is because to lessen the grade. We don't want to go straight up the hill.
It's hard on the knees. We want to go good you know 10%
grade switch back up to 10% grade and have a nice big turning radius for folks.
We'll rake away at this rock. Use a lot of this
nice smaller material rock to use as the actual
trail tread to step on um a lot of this dirt. There's actually dirt in here
which is hard to find in the gorge and this is
the stuff that really binds the best trail tread together. So we'll actually
be digging, carving through this a lot and transporting it farther up or down
trail to use as the tread that we walk on
here. We are on the reroute. This is a section we just cut
straight through the alluvium. We're right below the cliffs at this point
and it's uh the soil even though it hasn't rained. And a number of days is
still really wet because this is these are really dripping cliffs
that happen when it rains in this part also gets really good soil
really uh nice material to use for the trail
itself. That said it doesn't hold up all that
well once we cut into it so a lot of times you'll see these flags.
These are areas where we're going to need to
cut into this a little more, widen the trail a little more
and then try and establish something of a better angle of repose
with the slope itself so it's not constantly sloughing onto the trail.