We move LARGE rocks!

SWTrails and the Portland Parks Department collaborate on the first Thursday of each month to do maintenance on some of the trails in our southwest area. We’re always happy when new volunteers show up: October’s work party near Council Crest persuaded two young tourists from Kansas to join in! SWTrails board member Hans Steuch files this report (with photos): 

“There were a dozen or so participants in our work party. After the leaders’ safety talk we split up in two groups: one to work on steps on the “Trolley Trail”, the other to replace a compromised 10 inch culvert under the “Marquam Trail”. The culvert replacement, which I participated in, was in an area that had been heavily eroded by runoff from a broken water pipe near the peak of Council Crest. We dug out the metal culvert pretty quickly. Then we had to build a support wall with rocks/boulders where before there had been hard soil, now washed away. That wall building is what you see on two of the pictures. It took quite a while as the ravine created by the washout of the hill swallowed one large rock/boulder after the other. When finally that was done we filled the trough left from the metal drain pipe with large rocks, then 4 inch rock and lastly gravel.”