Fog, Rain, and Gravel... and More Gravel

The Saturday May 3 work day started off with the hill covered by thick fog and some steady moderate rain. From the top of the hill I couldn't see the Gaertner building. Slowly things improved, and Joe Zuraw, Dan Carnevale, Ray Burk, John Davis, Barry Hervieux, and Peter Scherff assembled to work on getting the telescope pad foundations layed out. For the rest of the day we seemed to have off and on drizzle, with the temperature struggling to hit 50. The night's view session at Notchview was obviously not going to happen, but credit Dan for optimism. He brought a scope up "just in case".

First step was to decide where to locate the pads. The four locations are:

1. Just across the road from the Gaertner (be careful driving around there in the dark!)
2. Just down from the ramp of the telescope storage shed
3. Below the upper parking lot
4. Half way between the clubhouse and the upper parking lot.

The next step was to scrape down the soil for the pads, then level the area with a good foundation of gravel. Sounds simple. Well, one truism on the hill is that nothing is level, and when you are on the hill what looks level to your eye probably isn't. Leveling pad #1 near the Gaertner proved to be a challenge... just one more tractor load of gravel turned into more than a dozen. While Joe drove the tractor the rest of us worked with shovels, rakes, and hoes to spread things out and try to level things off. With a couple of hours of hard work and lots to measuring with the level, we got things about ready. By this time it became pretty clear we weren't going to have the time, energy, and gravel to prep all four pads.

Next up was pad #2, by the telescope shed. We had what looked like a fairly level spot of exposed bedrock a starting point... surely this wasn't going to take very long to grade out with gravel.... about 20 tractor loads later, with the southeast side now raised up 2 or 3 feet, we had things more or less level and ready for concrete.

By now it was after 3PM, time for most of us to call it a day and brave the mud around the barn. Barry and Ray stayed on a while longer to do some tree work.

Thanks to all the helped out. I hope for an even larger crowd next week for the cement mixing and the annual meeting.

-Ed