Thankless Jobs; Clearing Ditches and Culverts

 Some trail work parties are great; nice weather, lots of volunteers, awesome photos.

This one, not so much.

 It starts at the Beginning.  The cold rain was moving out.  I ask everyone to turn around and get a "happy beginning group photo" and this is what I get.  It's like every family Christmas card photo, except everyone turned in unison away from the camera with better timing than the pool scene from "Caddyshack".  This is what we have to work with.

OK, after several takes we have a decent "Before" picture of volunteers at Lane St heading out in robust winds to clear the drainage swales and culverts along the RecPath.  Some people are even smiling.

Drainage maintenance is a thankless task.  And it has to be done ever year, sometimes multiple times!.

In this case a low berm of washed out gravel, leaves, and sticks builds up at low points and keeps runoff on the Path.  The shoulders and culverts have to be cleared out to allow runoff to flow off the RecPath and into adjacent woods and wetlands to prevent sedimentation and erosion from impacting the Path.

In this case the low point and a couple of bleed off locations uphill were cleared out to help drainage on the RecPath.

The Rouge Hoe is a great tool for this work.  The Shelton Trails Committee has a couple of them and they are the bomb for both heavy duty side hill digging and fussy scraping of seasonal debris.  They are heavy duty versions of US Forest Service tools that we have for volunteers to use.  They are very rugged tools that are Made in America and we can't recommend them enough for trail work.

The Lane St. Boardwalk looked funny with all the recent deck repairs last month.  It may be a little cocked and twisted but the boardwalk is in decent repair heading into the winter.

Further up the RecPath the crew was clearing ditches and overhead blow downs.  There are still some blowdowns hanging over the Path from previous storm damage, but, if you move quickly, and don't dawdle under them, they probably won't kill you.  We took down the "Caution" tape because most of the worst problems had been cleared.  That doesn't mean that branches that are hung up overhead won't come crashing down at any time and hurt you.  Look overhead as you go through the woods and move quickly past anything sketchy looking, particularly on windy days.

Meanwhile Mark and Ray were replacing a broken board on one of the wooden bridges north of Wesley Drive.

 

We cleared out upstream and downstream ends of cross-culverts and drainage ditches from Lane St. up to  Wesley drive.  A few of the inlets were buried by vegetation and had to be cut out before clearing the built up sediment at the pipes.

This is the chipmunks eye view of one of the culverts.  A portion of the pipe is clogged with silt down by the outlet, restricting the pipe's capacity.  The culverts need to be cleaned so runoff doesn't build up, overtop the Path, and erode the crushed stone surface.

The downstream channel needs to be cleared of blowdowns, barberry, sediment, and briars.  Some of the drains need further clearing with saws and power tools.

Some of the drainage ditches needed to be cleared of fallen logs and tree limbs.  Mike Flament lead the effort to roll the logs out of the ditches and un-block the culverts.

After clearing the ditches, Devin would jam one of our sturdy leaf blowers up the culvert and blast the leaves and sediment out the downstream end.

Bill Dyer was giving the official Thumb's Up to Devin's culvert cleaning efforts.  It's kinda fun to see all the gunk blasting out the end of the pipes.  It makes you feel like we have the system set up for winter storms.  After 2 months of drought we finally seem to be getting into a winter rainfall/snow cycle.

It was a cold morning with the wind picking up, but we had a good crew; Ray, Mark, Devin, Luis, Ellen, Bill, Mike, & Terry.  These are thankless routine maintenance tasks that need to be done every year to keep the Shelton Lakes RecPath in good shape.  Most people may not realize that these things need to be done, but like cleaning the gutters on your house every year this maintenance prevents  a lot of problems and damage.  All done by Shelton's Trails volunteers. Enjoy.