Quick Work

Small armies of volunteers make for quick work. Saturday morning many volunteers showed up armed with cordless drills, bug spray, and water containers. In two (2) short hours the bridge needing to come out was out.



You can see how the bank gave way underneath the steel abutment. It was a very unsafe situation. Working from the far side to the near we removed the wood deck. As volunteers continued to do that I followed behind removing bracing bolts, connection bolts, and wood deck runner bolts.

We hoisted the steel trusses off the abutments and they were brute forced up and out of the way. Having many volunteers made easy work of the several hundred pound trusses.

Saturday afternoon the wood deck was loaded up and taken to an undisclosed storage location. I went to a hardware store and bought some chain and paddle locks. The ramps and abutments were secured to trees. They will be reused and assholes will be assholes by doing whatever they can to disrupt the project. The chains and locks should dissuade any vandalism.

I’m in the process of replacing the thirty foot (30’) long steel trusses with fifty foot (50’) steel trusses. This will effectively push the abutments back and out of harms way. The shorter trusses were free. The new trusses will need to be paid for. I’m working on putting a price on the new trusses and additional wood needed.

Even without asking someone slid some money FAST’s way via PAYPAL. I’m continually impressed at how much the singletrack is used and the overwhelming support there is for it. A fund raising effort will be coming up. I’m confident we can gather donations to cover this setback quickly.

Not having this bridge does nothing to slow down trail building. We’ll continue on with out the bridge in place. If we get to that section before it is installed we’ll just dig up to where it will go. It can be installed anytime.

A very gracious neighborhood resident told us we could access this location through her yard. This saves a TON of work. Not everyone in the neighborhood is crabby or against this project.

Ride On.