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New Steps at Huguenot Flatwater

New Steps at Huguenot Flatwater

posted on March 3, 2018

Will and Zeke help place the first stone.

Zeke, Will, and Tyler bundle up the old steps for removal.

Before the stones could be placed the ground had to be cleared and leveled.

Stopping for a moment to admire our work, even though we were no where near finished.

Donuts and coffee are key drivers of success on JROC volunteer projects.

That was as far as the machine could reach. After that, gravity and sweat did the rest.

Josh put on a master class on stone work.

Josh drilling prep holes to split the rock.

Feather and wedge setup to cut this stone down to size.

A few taps from the mallet and the stone split like butter.

Feather are wedge is ancient technology dating back to ancient Egypt. Simple and effective.

The old wooden steps at Huguenot Flatwater are gone. The wood steps were rotted out and past their service life. As part of a two-day work project at Huguenot, JROC volunteers and JRPS Staff cleared invasive plant species, cleaned up, and installed new stone steps. Access to modern equipment only helped so much. The backhoe was unable to place the stones are the bottom of the stairs so we went old school, moving the large stones with steel rods and muscle. As we neared the top the backhoe could be used to place the stones but there was still a lot of manual adjusting.

These steps should provide reliable service to park users for decades, if not centuries. The stone was acquired from elsewhere in the park so this was a easy, read cheap, win for JRPS. The new steps should be completed in the near future. I will update this post when I hear more, but there were one or two more stones that needed to be placed to finish the project. At some point in the future, a handrail will also be installed. Thank you to all volunteers who showed up. Also a big thank you to JRPS staff for your continued dedication to improving the park.

Filed Under: Projects

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JROC P.O. Box 297 Richmond, Va. 23219