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Posted by D. Sherman [24.32.202.83] on Monday, January 18, 2010 at 23:36:42 :
In Reply to: could I winch this?!? posted by Kaegi [24.113.81.122] on Monday, January 18, 2010 at 22:50:46 :
I think they do have a sign as you come into Tumwater Canyon that says "Watch For Rocks". Glad it didn't land on anyone.
I do think it's stupid that they have to haul it away in dump trucks, these days. It's little things like that that add up to the state being broke. In the old days, the local highway shop would have taken care of it in a day with nothing more than a jackleg drill, a portable compressor, a case of powder, and a D8 cat. They'd break up the rock into pieces that the cat could easily move, say 20 tons or so for the biggest chunks, and push them over the side of the road into the river. Now, they're not allowed to push anything over the hillside, much less into a river, so they need multiple dump trucks, at least one excavator to load them, and they need to blast the rock into bite-sized bits that the excavator can handle. I bet the local highway shop doesn't keep any powder on hand either, so they have to contract the blasting out and pay big bucks for that too. Now, if that road wasn't there, that rock would have fallen right down the mountain and landed in the river. But because a road happened to interrupt the path of natural erosion, we have to pay loads of money to keep a rock that fell of a mountain from "polluting" the river at the bottom of the canyon.
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