On the same job we Dug the sagging road out 25' deep and 600' long, above Narada falls.
Our superintendent was a paving guy and really didn't understand that we needed to armor that as we brought it back up. We brought up bag wall with fabric and structural gravel and hammered each lift. It was steeper than the angle of repose.
He just wanted to get it to paving he didn't care about the armor until he did.
Now we had a situation we couldn't reach with the 345s.
So they brought in a Long reach 270 John Deere with 65 ft of boom and stick. Nobody else wanted to run it so I got the duty.
The trouble with Long reach booms is they are like a fishing pole. They're very flimsy flexible and easy to break. They're not the tool you want to have trying to pound in big boulders. They also don't have a thumb so everything you do is simply scoop and pray.
Then when you go to place it you might lose every fourth rock down the mountain before you can get it tucked in. They closed the trails down by Narada falls because I was sending 500 lb boulders through there.
I'd sit down and dip in the truck, then stand up as I swung around stick my head out so I could see what I was doing and reach behind me to the sticks.
That was the first lift of paving and then they had restored that historic rock wall so I walked within an inch or two of that to get as much reach as I could.
They had placed some armor on the trees down there and this is the perspective, reaching down to a guy 50 ft below me. It was pretty sketchy.
I had to track and reach at the same time to keep from knocking tree limbs down.
I placed 140 tons one rock at a time and then later another hundred after a big storm washed some down.
The same job at the Stevens canyon entrance. They had one foot thick concrete in the Drive-Thru and I had to remove it so they can repave. Like playing the game 'Operation!'
