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This was taken on April 26th, Finally spring is here, it was a dry winter and the water was way down already! We only have the rest of this year on this permit, this is going to be interesting! |
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May 5th The water is down an inch from our last trip! We only are going to get a few hours of run time, so we better make it count. |
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This is the cut we made in 2 hours, by then the water was too low to
run the dredge. We dropped the level by about 18 inches. We
did remove about 32 yards of material.
16 yards per hour, including all of the removal of weeds from the cutter, is a great rate! I wish we had more water |
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A closeup of the path we cut. We cut down over 5 feet from the top of the material. |
| While driving the dozer from the barn we found a turkey nest, we almost ran her over before she flew. |  |
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That's why we needed the dozer. Damn, I hate when that happens! Good thing it's an old truck. |
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May 21th: A few days before the holiday weekend, we dredged for 2 hours before running out of water. We got about another 1 hour in later that weekend. I'm going to contact the DEQ about using the crane to dredge, this is getting really bad! |
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We checked on our turkey friend, she hopped off of her nest as we walked
up. We saw 2 tiny chicks and several more eggs with live chicks inside
pecking at the shells.
She keep an eye on us from a distance, so we left right away so she could tend to her young. |
| Holy Cow! 4th of July weekend, and there is no more water! But, we did get a permit to move dirt with the crane, so we started to prep for that! |  |
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Over to the east of the dredge area, we started to prep for the crane. We
had to remove the discharge hose to make way.
Helga and Dumpy should really start to move some mud!
Our goal is to remove the organic down to firm sand so we can get out to the permitted dredge area. This is looking north |
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We carefully smoothed a road to get the crane and truck down on the
lake bottom. We got Dumpy in there, loaded him up, but he got stuck
REAL BAD!
The road is too steep to climb out in the soft sand. |
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We had to drag him out with the dozer, what a pain!
The sand was too steep and too soft to drive on!!
We need something to firm up the sands! |
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We had to dump the load, and make the road better, he still got stuck,
so we made the road even better. We need some rain to pack the sand
tight to drive on.
It was really a bad weekend for mud, we didn't move a single bucket from the lake! We re-graded the road for a smoother ramp, Better luck next time! |
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July 19th: We're back and it rained about 2 inches. We backed Dumpy down to the crane for loading. All options to firm the sand where too costly, so we decided to try it anyway. Dumpy did okay in the moist sand, so Carol got a bucket and dumped some lake water on the soft dry sand ruts, that firmed it right up! |
| Yahooo, We dug for about 9 hours over 2 days. We moved about 20 heaping truckloads of material. |  |
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We didn't hit solid bottom here, so we need to move over and try again.
With the crane, we slice off the top layer of organic down to sand, then
we grade the sand flat so we can stand on it with the crane.
Flirting around the soft edge with the crane is kinda scarry, I hope it holds, or else we'll have a 25 ton fish habitat.(when we get fish) |
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August 1: We moved quite a bit of dirt this weekend. We're starting to get out there! We also moved our camper out to the point overlooking the lake and the worksite. It's the white speck just above the crane cab. |
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By the end of the weekend, we had cleared about 44 truckloads of stuff, As always, we backblade the area smooth and rake out all of the tracks from the dozer so it looks nice, now it's time to go home! |
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August 8: We couldn't wait to get at it again, but this time it just wasn't going to happen. After about 9 loads, our road started to get too mushy. So I had to get some gravel to firm it up. We bootlegged down to the local gravel pit and took 4 loads home with Dumpy. This was the first time I drove on the road, with a load. How scarry! That's a big loader, 6 yards a scoop!!! |
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With material dumped at the top of the road, I have to spread an even layer to firm up the soft sand. |
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We built up the slope of the road to get a smoother hill, then we covered
it with a 8 inch layer of bank run gravel. Bank run is just the gravel
as is, with all of the other stuff mixed in, right from the bank.
We packed it down as best we could with the dozer, but we really need a good rain to consolidate the sand and gravel together, so I think we're done for the weekend. |
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September 1: We forgot the digital camera, so all we have is the "after" pictures from the holiday weekend. We only moved about 25 truckloads, the road was still kinda soft. |
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September 10: We moved 64 truckloads in 4 days of work! Actually it was 2 full days and 2 half days, Nothing broke, we only got stuck twice and the road held fair. I would have to say, our best worktime! Here we used the dozer to built up a sand pad out to the west, to the edge of the firm ground, so now we start hauling the sloppy stuff again. |
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Here is Helga loading up Dumpy for another trip.
We remove an area from the firm edge, out as far as we can swing out, about 40 feet. Then when that's done, we build north along the shore, staying just on the firm edge. |
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Here is the area we cleared, looking south along the firm edge.
Each move of the crane gets us about 40 more feet of reach, this is after
3 moves, and we did a total of 4.
We dug down to hard sand, about 7 or 8 feet. The water slowly seeps in the hole, leaving a mushy mess. We'll remove that in the spring with the dredge. The water is held back by a slice of material left in place to keep the hole dry, later in the day it broke, flooding our work area. |
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September 13:We're finished for the weekend. We repaired the road and flattened our work area. The rain should move in any day now, and pack everything firm. |
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October 1st: Well, we did get the rain to pack the sand. Then the rain turned to snow! We got 2 inches of snow, the road was like putty, so no mud moved this weekend! |
Snow shuts down operations at the lake,time to pull all of our equipment. I hope this snow is a good sign of things to come! |
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October 26: We get back up to winterize the dredge and close up for the winter. |
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While we're up here, Denny gets some dozer time!
Thanks Denny! |
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back to the top
2003 was a lousy year for dredging. Normally the lake is up in the spring, then it falls as the summer comes. This year it started low, and went lower! We had a few weekends where we pumped for about 2 or 3 hours. I finally got the nerve to call the DEQ and ask about using the crane to move mud. They said it was fine. So we started making a road into the lake bottom. We had a few bad weekends where the road was too soft to drive the truck out of the lake, and we had a few days that where incredible! For the whole summer, we moved about 1,800 yards of material. |
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