FEB Lasstic Updates 2013

Dear Friends,

As I said in my last update, we had an advance crew in to set the HQ up, and prepare for our arrival. Neils & I arrived on January 14, followed quickly by several others. We ramped up to a household size of 17 and expect to be between 12 and 17 for the next number of weeks. My wife and youngest daughter arrived on the 25th. The household breaks down to 12 men working on the project and 5 wives and children looking after the household.
We started with getting a road into the canyon. We were told of the mass rearrangement of the landscape caused by the two hurricanes, but it is another thing to see it at first hand. The river bottom has deep canyons cut into the gravel, and it took a lot of work to cut a road that could be used by gravel trucks and general vehicles.
Even as the road was being built our young men hiked up the canyon with shovels, wheelbarrows, and misc. supplies. They got started on the canal repairs, and as soon as the road was ready, we started hauling in construction materials, we brought up a container for a storage and workshop area, and we concentrated on getting everything ready for a big concrete push. Our mechanic arrived from Vanderhoof, BC on Jan 21, and his 1st job was to get the rock drill going and up to the canyon. That went pretty good until the guys laid the drill over on its side while loading it on the truck. A few days later it was back on its tracks and in running condition again.
There was an oil leak in a hydraulic cylinder that worsened as we worked our way up the canyon. Some investigation told us that parts were not available in the country, and when the oil leak got to about 1 GPM we knew we couldn’t proceed. Sam flew to Miami while I got the parts ordered for next day delivery to the dealer there. Nothing every works that smooth, even in a supposedly civilized country, but he was back in about 72 hours. $350 worth of parts turned into quite a bit more than that in cost to the project. Can anybody say “$1000 O-ring”?
One of the effects of the storms is that in our work area in the canyon much of the gravel has been washed away, leaving boulders on bedrock. The drill is not really an all-terrain vehicle, being really made for more controlled conditions. At its best, it goes about 1 MPH, so it took the help of the excavator and a little patience to get it worked up to the dam so we could drill in the required anchor holes needed to attached the new construction to the bedrock.
The effort required to get it there was worth it. Even though our regular drill operator was unable to come this year, once we got it to the dam our crew was able to complete all the anchor drilling in one afternoon!
While we were waiting for the drill to come up, we spent the time in prep work. Two work areas were constructed by building retaining walls on both the upstream and downstream sides of the dam, and a level area created by hauling in dirt to fill them. We cut steel drums in half lengthwise and welding them together to form chutes, and these were anchored down the rock to the bottom of the new dam. We were able to clean the riverbed down to bedrock in most of the area under the dam. We placed large boulders in the middle of the stream, and with sheets of plywood and by plugging the leaks with dirt, we were able to divert the stream into about ½ of the channel. We poured about 10 yards of concrete into the newly exposed channel area, and from there fashioned a bridge from 1” rebar over the flowing water. We have poured about 1’ of concrete over the bridge, all of it bristling with rebar, bedrock anchors, and tie-in points. In our test runs while pouring the over mentioned concrete, we were able to mix and place about six yards per hour, which is close to double what we were able to produce in 2011 when we built the original dam.
Last year we were able to drive trucks right to the dam site when hauling sand. Since the dam was completed, we have built the canal and control structures, so we now have to move all out materials by wheelbarrow and bucket. Hurricanes Issac and Sandy damaged our project, and also damaged much of the local infrastructure and crops. This should be bean harvest time, but there are basically no crops to harvest, so many of the locals are desperate for income. We started hiring workers from the canyon just like normal, and every day when we arrive at work the crowd of potential workers is bigger. We have been using about 115 local workers on the materials haul, and the hopeful crowd is often 300+. Some of them have walked as much as four hours after hearing that there was employment in the area. Besides the locals whom we know from working with them over the years, we have concentrated on hiring those who are widows or have young children to provide for. It’s really heart breaking to see the disappointment in the faces of those not needed for work on any given day, and some will stay around all day just hoping that some work will come up. The work performance has been better than average as those with jobs realize that there are plenty of replacements if they get caught shirking.
Transportation is always a challenge here. The roads are rough enough that vehicles decline rapidly. Our 2011 DMax with about 20K miles is ready for its third set of tires, has some broken suspension parts, is leaking oil from the rear end, has a broken bed mount, a small amount of body damage, and most recently, the 4X4 system has quit working. This is why we pretty much need a full time mechanic on site. We have rented a Nissan Patrol that was used quite a bit when it was new, we have our recently rebuilt quad, and most exciting, we purchased a new Polaris Ranger Crew! Much as we like our other stuff, the Ranger has quickly captured the place as the favorite vehicle for canyon runs. It is smoother at 30MPH in the canyon than our DMax equipped with an off road suspension kit is at 10 MPH.
Looking ahead we expect to start building the lower section of the dam in earnest yet this week. We expect to have a side crew or two repairing fountains, installing the control gates, and similar miscellaneous works. The locals are anxious for water on their growing crops, so we hope to have at least some flow available to them by the middle of February.
We were also privileged to host Raymond & Vera at our compound over the weekend. They were in town getting the last supplies that they needed before heading out west to start construction on the bridge project. The last of their materials have cleared customs, and their construction crew has mostly arrived. We hope to be able to spend a weekend out there soon to see their progress.
And finally, our long awaited container is scheduled to dock yet this week, and our contact at CAM says they usually get them about a week later. To make due until then, we have purchased some items, rented and borrowed others, done some “doing without”, and generally progressed as best we could. It will be much more convenient when we have the good tools that we need here on hand. I think the crew is getting tired of hearing me say “well we have one of those in the container . . .”
Most of the locals wear used clothing from the US. There are many printed t-shirts with a wide variety of sayings, some gender or situation appropriate, many of them not. Since almost none of the mountain folks can read, what their shirts say is a non-issue for them. We compare notes about shirts we have seen, and how they fit or did not fit the situation. I think the best of the canyon shirts was worn by one of our workers, and on the back it read “If what you did yesterday still looks BIG to you, you haven’t done much TODAY. Go do something big!