Working With Obstacles
This past week was full of new experiences as we worked in a new location, Hawk Hills. Working in a new location, however, can mean certain access troubles and obstacles that need to be conquered. This week, our obstacles were watercourses!
August is here and I am well adapted to my position as a layout summer student. I am enjoying the freedom of working on my own and having my routines and strategies for getting the job done. One of the main aspects of layout is streaming watercourses, and there are many new watercourses that continue to pop up in the Hawk Hills area. Streaming watercourses happens almost daily, and it often takes a few days to complete an entire watercourse. Within our layout blocks, watercourses are somewhat easy to conquer, but it is when they spread outside the block that they can cause some difficulty. We have been quadding to access our blocks this week, which is my favourite type of access. Quads, however, cannot cross a creek like an argo can!
There were two instances this week where a creek crossed an access road to our blocks, leaving us with some problem-solving to do.
The first creek we encountered was fairly small and seemed manageable for the quads. We attempted to cross it because it wasn’t too steep, but the grass was wet and slippery from the rain! Our quad ended up sliding which was too much of a risk to keep going. I attached a video that aligns with this day!
The second creek was much larger as it was directly attached to a beaver pond. The banks were steep and the dirt was soft. Luckily, we came prepared to build! We brought a chainsaw and some shovels and got to work. First, we used our quad winch to pull these old, heavy logs out of the creek. Our supervisor had been there the previous day to scope it out and noticed that a trapper had big wood boards and planks there from an older bridge that was there previously! With them gone, we could access the banks much better and make the bank more angled and flatter for the quads to descend. After the flattening of the banks, we needed to cut the logs to fit the length of the creek. Our coworker Kollin is chainsaw certified. While he was chainsawing the logs, we measured and transported them back into the creek. In total, this project took us roughly two and a half hours, but definitely worth it as our quads easily made it across the creek!
This day was definitely one of my favourite days of the year because I got to problem-solve with the other students and build something fairly sturdy with the little materials available. It is fun when I get to access my blocks with ease, but nothing beats some hard work and quality building with the other students!
