Mission Accomplished!

This past Wednesday Julie and I would start with a swim at MTU. I would get in 2,900 yards, drop her off at home, and then head over to Maasto Hiihto where I would work with Mark, Wolf, Stan, Doug, John, Dave, and Pete on wrapping up the construction of the Trail 17 boardwalk.

When I arrived, Mark was moving aggregate to the end of the boardwalk with Stan guiding him in to create the approach from the trail.

As others would arrive, we would get after finishing up the nails and screws needed in the joist hangers on the last segment of the boardwalk and hauling in the remaining deck boards.

With these quickly in place, we started work on the 2 x 6 rails along the side of the boardwalk.

Given the excellent crew that was assembled, this work went quickly as well.

By the lunch hour the boardwalk was complete and we started dismantling the temporary bridge that we had used throughout the project.

With this work completed I grabbed this shot of the crew on hand to note the completion of the two structures.

From left to right are Wolf Meingast, Stan Vitton, Doug Oppliger, Pete Loubert, and Mark Roberts. Once again, I can’t stress enough the importance of the planning and the direction of work carried out by Mark as it is hard to imagine how we would have gotten this project completed in such a narrow time frame. We were also incredibly fortunate to have such a great group of volunteers who brought outstanding skill and effort to the project. It is also important to note the significant grant support the project received from Visit Keweenaw. Also very notable on this project was the role of the club’s tractor which had been made possible through an earlier generous contribution by the John and Melissa Besse Foundation.

Only Mark, Stan, Pete, and I would stay on after lunch as this smaller group would be focused on spreading aggregate on the trail leading up to the boardwalk.

I would head out at 2:30 as I needed to be over to the Chassell Trails to chainsaw fallen and dead trees on and along the ski trails ahead of the men from Sigma Rho Fraternity who would be helping Brian Waters (the Chassell Planning Commission Chair), Julie, and me with that effort. Before heading out from Maasto Hiihto, Pete got this shot of me in front of the completed boardwalk.

Back in Chassell, we had branches from a large maple that had been recently taken down that needed to be moved away from the third base side of Misslitz Field as an initial task for the Sigma Rho guys. This gave me the opportunity to lug my chainsaw, gas, and bar oil up the trail to start cutting. The fraternity volunteers would be a huge help as there would have been no way that Brian and I could have moved a number of the trees that I took down with the saw. We would come off the trail just as darkness was starting to set in about 6:00 p.m. I got this shot of Brian with four of the Sigma Rho guys who were still with us at the point we wrapped up at the old ice rink.

Dan Palosaari with DP Construction is in the process of retrofitting the former warming building at the old rink into a grooming shed for the Gator, snowmobile, and grooming equipment. They are adding garage doors on each end so the equipment can be pulled in one way and driven out the other without backing up. We sincerely appreciate Dan’s contribution to the transfer of the trail responsibility with Jim Tervo’s retirement!

Thursday would be a rainy day which gave me the opportunity to catch up with things at home, but Friday would find me back out at Trail 17 for more than four hours with Mark, Wolf, and Stan as we would be focused on cleaning up the site, moving rock, loading out unused lumber going back to McGann’s, loading out the small amount of scrap lumber we had created, and then moving a gate.

With the site cleaned up, things were looking pretty sharp! It is still amazing that we got this project completed ahead of the snow as Facebook noted that morning that we were skiing on that date two years ago.

After wrapping up that afternoon I ran by Centennial Park in Chassell where significant progress continues by MJO on the waterfront boardwalk project funded by the MDNR Spark Grant.

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