Banks-Vernonia State Trail Maintenance

On May 9, my friend Tom Frillman and I went out to work on the Banks-Vernonia State Trail.  We worked with park rangers Jeremy Williams and Dylan Vendang.  We spent the day (9:00 AM to 2:00 PM) patching potholes.  We got into park vehicles and drove down to the Manning Trailhead, and started driving north until we got to the first large pothole.  I learned a new skill!  Lots of steps to this…

• Find the pothole (not that hard, actually).
• Get out the rock saw and cut the pavement to make the edges clean and square.
• Shovel out the broken pavement, gravel, and dirt down to a depth of about three or four inches.  ✎
• Level and tamp the loose soil to form a fairly compact underlayment.
• Then we divided up the tasks.
  • Dylan shoveled “cold patch” (an asphalt material) into the hole one shovel full at a time.
  • Jeremy used a big propane torch to heat the “cold patch” so it could be spread out and tamped down more easily.
  • Tom raked the hot asphalt and spread it out.
  • I used the hand tamper to smash the asphalt more or less flat and compact it a bit.
• We get out the big vibration machine and take turns tamping the new asphalt down hard.
• We spread a small layer of sand over the new material and give it the vibration treatment again.
• Sweep off the excess sand.
• Move on to the next one!

Note where Jeremy and Dylan are having lunch – a real tailgate party!

PBC member Jim Harness went out to Stub Stewart and helped three rangers patch more potholes, and Vickie Skakel has offered to help.  Non-member John Kaib and Steve Shapiro have offered their assistance on June 6.  Jim Harness has also offered to help out on June 22.

Dave McQuery, Member at Large

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