It turned out to be a nice, cool day on the road up to Miller Launch, and when we arrived launch was still in the clouds. Which was a good thing because we worked our asses off.

The crew met at around 8 AM: Rafael Ramirez (who provided the equipment), Debbie Hodge (did lots of shuttle driving and brought and set up the lunches), Jordan Ramirez (operated the skid steer with bucket), Eric Smith (who negotiated with the USFS), Dave Bishop, Eric Tucker, Andy Miller, Rick Venglarcik, Ioan Miftode, Mitch Schacter, Jake Horseman and me. As we drove through the launch gate we saw the bulldozer that the USFS had used to do the road repairs.

The heavy rains a night or two before had left the road pretty wet, and it wasn't well compacted, so things were a little messy at first. Someone had driven up before us, and there were deep ruts where the tires cut right through the wet soil. Still, it was a vast improvement over the last time I saw that road. There used to be a couple of dangerous spots where you could high-center or even overturn if you weren't careful - all that was gone. It was almost two-wheel all the way up to launch.

First job was to walk the road picking up organics, branches and the like, that would mess up compaction. Then while Jordan cleaned up and compacted the road we did shovel work and stacked rocks in a couple of places to try to prevent rain runoff from hollowing out erosion cuts and carrying the road away.

We broke for lunch around noon, already pretty tired, but afterwards went right back to it.

While one crew worked on clearing the north and east launches and setup areas, we went to work on the southeast launch. We added perhaps 6" to 8" of soil to the ramp in spots, raising and contoured it and increasing the slope a bit. We also cleared brush around the launch. That took quite a while because of the large amount of soil required, eating up most of the rest of the day.

We still want to do some hand work, improving the remaining drainage cuts, but the road is already greatly improved. I'm not afraid to have visitors drive it any more. I think the day was a big success.

My phone/camera ran out of batteries before the day ended, I hope others will post their observations, pictures and videos in this thread.

http://www.sahga.com/forum3/gallery/ima ... age_id=888


http://www.sahga.com/forum3/gallery/ima ... age_id=889


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http://www.sahga.com/forum3/gallery/ima ... age_id=891


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