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[workhike] Phelix Bridge Building · Sat. Jul. 20th, 2013 - Sun. Jul. 21st, 2013

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Organized by: Christian Veenstra.

Start: Saturday, Jul. 20th
End: Sunday, Jul. 21st, 11:00 pm

Description:

The Brian Waddington Hut is a beautiful place. The trail up there is more-or-less complete, but Mother Nature keeps destroying the bridges we (I?) build at the outflow of the lake just before the cabin. This will be bridge building trip #3.

The first iteration was made with on-site logs. We cut down some standing deadwood, dropped it across the river, and bolted it all together and to some boulders. After the first winter is was badly cracked by snow loading, and after the second it was destroyed.

The second iteration was a 2-cable-style "bridge". One for the feet and one for the hands. The idea was that the cable would not experience any snow loading, since it was thin enough to slice through the snow. This turned out to be incorrect. The snow-creep through the outlet of the lake turns out to be a powerful force - it sheared the 3/4" rock anchors in half and left the cable dangling uselessly. Not that this is 3/4" diameter (nnot length) steel rock anchors. One hole took all my hammer drill's batteries, the second took 6 people with a bit and sledgehammer something like 4 hours. These things are rated to 100kN. That's a lot of force, so clearly we cannot fight it.

The current plan is to build a bridge adbutment on one side using a gabion cage, use an existing boulder on the other, and then made a lightweight wooden bridge deck to drop across. The bridge will not be attached to anything, rather it will be removed and just left lying on the ground beside the bridge every fall so that it doesn't have to support any snow loading. If the last party of the year forgets to un-install it then (hopefully) it will just get pushed out the end of the lake and we'll simply need to find it rather than build a new one.

So, for this weekend, we'll need people to carry wood up the trail, and carry rocks arond the alpine. Sounds like fun, no?

Since I don't come to UBC so often, I will try and do the organization for this trip via email. We'll mark people as going as we fill cars etc.

Posted: 2013-07-14 20:34:31
Last modified: 2018-10-21 01:13:08