Bouldering Trail

The western portion of the trail connects a number of popular bouldering areas. The trail happens to start on Eldorado Canyon State Park property, possibly travels over private property, and ends on City of Boulder Open Space.

A metaphorical picture of this trail:

Scope

From scope

From scope

From scope

From scope

From scope

The view through this thing is fantastic. I was checking out individual handholds on Redgarden wall climbing routes.

Happy Mule

Sad Mule:

From welding

Weld a bolt and some washers together to hold the sad headlight on the sad mule:

From welding

Voila! Happy headlight, mule so happy it shines!

From welding

Sander!

The sand spreader was having a hard time spinning. Upon closer inspection, there are three lube points:

From plow

Much better.

NCOBS rocks.

On Thursday afternoon of last week, I got a curious phone call. A group of instructors from the North Carolina Outward Bound School are on the "service bus". They're driving across the country, doing good deeds and sneaking in some climbing, rafting, hiking, ...

They were looking for a service project here in the park. Talk about coincidences - a new memorial telescope arrived last week, and it was exactly the right time to build a platform for it. The coincidences continued - just as the crew arrived at the trailhead, we were met by the family for whom we were building the memorial telescope.

From The Service Bus Team

From ncobs

From The Service Bus Team

This is apparently the proper way to use a McCloud.

From ncobs

It was a remarkable experience to have them here. They did great work, they were incredibly enthusiastic, and they set the place on fire with good vibes. Joy.

Random Scenery

Combine a resource technician, an iPhone, and some beautiful sunrises in the canyon, and you get some mediocre photographs:

From scenery

From scenery

From scenery

Watershed School

Yesterday I was treated to a visit from the high school students of the Watershed School. I'm trying to rope some of them into revamping our recycling project.

From watershed

They've been studying water in the west this semester, and have spent a significant amount of time learning about water law. As part of their studies they've worked with Denver Water. I chaperoned them to the Denver Water diversion dam, and spent some time talking about how this State Park views our water resources.

How to Winterize Your Sprinklers, Febco Style

Tools/parts needed:

• Air compressor (bigger is better)
• 1/4" npt fitting to connect your air compressor to the Febco valve
• Wrenches for fittings
• Teflon tape (optional)
• Knowledge of how your sprinkler system works

This assumes that you don't have a fancy blow-out valve located downstream from your Febco. If you've got one, for heaven's sake, close the valves on the Febco and use it.

Step One:

Turn off the water supply before (upstream of) the Febco valve.

Step Two:

Remove the plastic cover from the upper petcock valve on the Febco. Thread in the 1/4" ntp X air compressor fitting.

There are four ball valves that have to be set: Two with handles, two with a screwdriver. Going counter-clockwise in the picture below (the same direction the water flows), set:

• The upstream handle valve perpendicular to the pipe (closed)
• The upstream petcock valve straight up and down (closed)
• The downstream petcock valve straight up and down (closed)
• The downstream handle valve parallel to the pipe (open)

From blowout

Step Three:
Fire up your compressor. You'll want to regulate the pressure to about 70 psi. More than that may damage the Febco valve, less than that won't activate the breaker in the valve. You'll know if you have too little pressure because the Febco makes a delightful farting noise. If the pressure is just right, there will be a brief (10 seconds or so) hissing noise and then the valve will quiet down as pressure is directed into the outbound pipe.

Leave the downstream petcock valve closed - we'll use that to control whether we're forcing air into the system or not. Connect the compressor hose.

From blowout

Step Four:
It's your choice. If you've got a big enough compressor (and I can almost guarantee you don't), just leave the compressor hooked up, turn the downstream petcock valve open, then walk around and turn each zone on and off.

If you've got a small compressor, you'll have to do a bunch more walking. Turn on one zone, walk back to the Febco, open the downstream petcock valve until the compressor's tank pressure is below 70psi, then close the petcock valve. Repeat until you stop blowing air and water out of the sprinkler heads (or whatever you're draining)

From blowout

It's kinda fun.

Step Five:
When you're all done, it's good to leave all four valves kinda half-open. I don't particularly know why - but at the least, it serves as a good reminder that the valve has been winterized.

From blowout

The Fence

The fence is progressing nicely. Had a crew of 6 working this weekend:

From volunteer

From volunteer

A Welding Project

A really fascinating part of computer science is the "boot loader". "Boot", in that context, has become a ubiquitous word. Hard to believe that it comes from such folksy, humble origins as picking oneself up by one's bootstraps.

The little I know of welding so far makes me think of bootstrapping. We bought a welding screen, so as not to blind coworkers or passersby. Rather than just hang it in a doorway or something, I welded a frame for it:

From welding

With the screen in place:

From welding

I did have to buy some stock steel at the hardware store, but was able to make the feet out of old steel shelving parts, and made the pegs for the curtain out of finishing nails.

My welds are still UGLY. Hoo-eee. But they're less ugly than they were. Now that using the welder isn't as nerve-wracking, it's becoming more fun.

A Clean, Well-Lighted Place

Before, after:

From bathrooms

After:

From bathrooms

This has been on my list of things to do for months now. Ahhhh.

Happy Tree

Before:

From supremacy

Sad tree, exposed roots.

After:

From supremacy

Happy tree, roots covered.

National Public Lands Day

Well, it was my first NPLD, but it went well. I had two volunteers, and we stumbled into a very dense thistle population:

From npld08

With our bounty:

From npld08

haiku...

Anne's big summer of
maintenance - just don't call her
"Reinemachefrau"

Farewell, funniest of seasonals. The Ukraine is getting one of our best.

On a lighter note...

The new equipment arrived for the "Fishing is Fun" project. It's actually simpler to operate than the mini-excavator we had earlier this week. Just much, MUCH bigger.

From fif

The Unnamable

My week was dominated by processing human waste. Accordingly, there will be no pictures today.

Highlights include:
1) Learning that everything about the evap toilets is counterintuitive. They don't just need some wood shavings - they need to be filled. They don't just need a little sprinkling of water every so often, they need regular soakings. When the black water builds up in the bottom of the tanks, and they start to stink, they need more fan, not less.

2) Creating a sanitary procedure for dealing with the evap toilets. In the basement, where the vaults are, everything is set up so that the unlucky visitor can put on gloves, work with tools that will be kept exclusively in that basement, wipe the tools down with a bleach solution, and de-glove before leaving. I'll refine the system.

3) The foulness that is the south restroom vaults. We need trash cans either in the restrooms or immediately outside. It is amazing what people manage to fit down the seats...

Low-hanging Fruit

A lot of people stopped and said "thanks" - this will be a good job for the occasional day when I need a booster.

From roads

I used 3/4" crushed rock from a local mine. $5/ton - very affordable project with good results (so far). We'll see how well it works long-term.

I can't believe I invented this...

Well, they didn't have one pre-made. Simple, really: Bring the compressor up to the Visitor's Center, attach this to the blowout valve for the outdoor water faucet, blow water out of line for winter.

First Welding Project

It ain't purdy, but it will get the job done, and for about $4 in steel, will save a bunch of money in spilled janitorial supplies:



Here's the 45 degree test. No spills! If that old maintenance truck hits a 45+ degree roll, there'll be more trouble than just spilled cleansing materials.

Trail Ends!

Some visitors were very frustrated with the Eldorado Canyon Trail:

"Lack of Signage/cairns near/past Rincon/.8 miles to VC area, near boulders. UNMARKED - TRAIL JUST ENDS!!"

I did a little work - hopefully the trail is a bit clearer now.

Before:


After:


Before:


After:


My biggest challenge was seeing the trail with "fresh" eyes - I'm so used to it that I almost didn't notice the overgrowth.

First multi-volunteer project

Six of 'em, and we made the place look purdy.

Before:


After:


More photos can be found here.

All in all, it was a very rewarding project. I got about two tons of crusher fines (a.k.a. "Pink Breeze") at Pioneer Sand and Gravel. Then we pulled weeds, leveled out the trail, and topped it with a nice layer of fines.

This makes enough of an improvement in visitor's first impressions of the park that it's probably worth $50 a month in the summer to go get Pink Breeze and keep refreshing the trails. I think a tidy, well maintained entrance says pretty succinctly "We mean business."

It's amazing.

We've had a clogged urinal. I suspected something complicated - a deposit of salts or calcium, some bad plumbing, something. I read through countless testimonials from plumbers about clogged urinals, and the advice was the same: Pull the urinal.

I did.

Someone with low hygienic standards and nimble fingers had managed to lodge a big wad of gum and plastic wrappers down the urinal. I'm actually amazed, more than anything. I can't figure out how they did it, let alone why.

My Section of Trail

Last week, the Trails crew generously let me spend a day with them. I made this. It's a small section of trail, but I'm proud anyways.



To have lots of nice small-size rock on trails, you don't haul small-size rocks. You haul a sledgehammer and turn big rocks into medium rocks, drop them on the trail, and then turn the medium rocks into small rocks.

More about the Fowler Trees.

The mystery of the dead trees begins to unravel.



Looking from the bottom up - the innards of the tree seem healthy, and there was a good drainage of sap from the center of the tree. I walked along the tree thunking it with a sledgehammer. About 10 feet up, the tone changes - I'd bet that the tree is dead from there up.



This is what the damaged portion of the tree looks like. It's shedding its bark.



All of the branches look like this. Debarked, with insect galleries clearly visible.



The notch cut was above shoulder height. Hard work.



I'm not proud of this cut. It got the job done, but this was a treacherous, loose slope. I was lucky to have the uphill tree to hide behind when the lower tree fell.

The worst day in my office...

is probably better than the best day in yours: