Posted November 17, 2007
The death of my wife put a temporary stoppage to construction. Finding new love caused a near abandonment of the project. Well, abandonment is a bit strong though I did pretty much stop construction after capping the retaining walls around the operations patio. The cause of the stoppage was finding new love but more so the apparent likelihood that I would be relocating to the Pasadena / Monrovia / Eagle Rock area.
After eight months of dating, and a decision to marry, we have decided to stay in Palmdale. Work on the pike picked up in earnest again on November 5, 2007 (yes, over a year since my last posting).
One other major event spurred the new flurry of activity: the "discovery" of a fill dirt source. The stoppage, in addition to conciderations about moving, was partly do to the fact that the next step in the process required ten to fourteen yards of fill dirt be moved into the yard to fill the "southwest mountains" area of the pike. One of the club members put me onto a pile of dirt which only needed transporting. After a little cajoling and some checking around to find that it would be too expensive to have an excavator haul in dirt for me, I started the weeks long task of moving the pile which looks like it will be just about the right amount of dirt. My first half yard was hauled on Monday, November 5. I hauled two more loads that week and then got a major boost when three larger trucks helped me haul about six and a half more yards on Saturday and Sunday, November 10 and 11.
Before having space to place the Saturday dirt, I had to cover the tunnels. This I did with cedar and plastic.
I am not ready to build tunnel portals and retaining walls, so I used scrap pavers and landscape boarders to temporarily hold the dirt back from the tracks.
This is a picture of the new Black Widow Gultch which will one day sport the Gn15 Black Widow Gold Mine. The Gulch will be spanned by a double trestle that will travel off the western tunnel (to the right) and over the eastern tunnel (to the left). The inside track will climb from 14 inches above base to 24 inches above base to cross itself creating a figure 8.
The foreground area is the site for the mining town of Chuckwalla Springs.
This shot is taken from the operation patio looking west. The area right behind the retaining wall will be leveled at 14 inches above base and will curve around to the village of Daisyville along the west side of the patio where the staging sidings will be.
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