Heck Hill Community Driveway

After several years of wanting to upgrade our road, no one feels better to see gravel from top to bottom of Heck Hill than those who have worked the hardest to get the project done.

Thursday we had Michell's Excavating deliver about 30 yards of gravel and spread it on the last section to complete the new gravel to connect us to the Tinker Road entrance.

Getting this last section ready for gravel was a team effort with our neighbours Noreen and Richard Lucas, who are here trimming the salal, small cedars and fir trees out of the ditch so we could more easily clean out and widen the ditch.  Just to clear out the vegetation took us about 30 man hours together.

They piled the trimmings along the side of the road and later I came with my tractor and bucket extension and picked up and burned it all.  Normally we would have picked this up the same day...

But we had tickets to the Victoria Symphony for the Sunday matinee... something we haven't enjoyed since leaving Kelowna.

With just two bolts I can attach a 28" extension to the bucket which greatly helps to carry larger loads of trimmings.  I've lost count of all the loads of trimmings that we have picked up and burned, but just this last section of road took seven full tractor loads plus a heaping pickup load.

Richard made a couple of passes with the angled blade on his tractor to re-establish the ditch.

To prevent the loose material from sloughing back into the ditch I cleaned it all out, deepening and widening the ditch, one 4-foot bucket at a time.

I then cleaned up the edges of the ditch by hand with a shovel, throwing the excess material into the bucket.  It took from Monday afternoon to Thursday morning just before the gravel arrived to get this process completed.

I loaded the excess material into the truck from the back, pushing the dirt forward as the box filled up.  Eight loads of debris were removed from the ditch. It sure would have been nice to have a dump box.  Hand shovelling to unload it all took care of the need to do "stretches"with Shirley this week... who also helped unload almost every load.

When the truck drops the gravel while driving forward, it falls thicker in the middle and less to the outside... so Richard and I did a lot of hand raking to pull the material to the edge of the ditch, without putting any into the ditch.  Ask me if my arms were sore by the end of the afternoon?

The raking was worth it.  Notice the nice straight line along the ditch.  Today when the sun came out I did a walk about and took a few photos of the just completed gravelled road.

I still need want to put more gravel where needed in a few places... like this corner...

And along the side where the road base is the widest midway up this section.

And we ran out of material right at the front entrance due to the flare at this intersection... it will be an easy fix.

Someday we will hopefully get a new entrance statement with rock posts, iron gates and proper signage.  What do you think about that?

"A job worth doing is worth doing together."