Skidding, Rolling, and Lifting
Sold! To the person with a giant backhoe...
One of the fun parts about backcountry rock work is searching around to find the rocks to build with. One of the most laborious parts is then moving the chosen rocks to the building site. Some wilderness crews use a come-along or grip hoist, but most do it with human power, rolling the rocks downhill to the trail with their hands or with a six-foot long rockbar. Here are a few backcountry sayings, born of many hours of wrestling against gravity:
Skidding is better than rolling, rolling is better than lifting, lifting sucks.
Stones come in three sizes: hernia, double-hernia, and too small.
If you can carry it, it’s too small.
This entry was posted on Sunday, August 9th, 2009 at 5:58 am and is filed under stone, trails. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
August 11th, 2009 at 6:43 am
That’s a Sex Stone
– BFR – Big (F doesn’t mean flying) Rock
When a man’s back goes out his brain begins to work.
Finding a helper is hard. Anyone dumb enough to take the job is usually too stupid to do the work.
August 11th, 2009 at 7:23 am
Great looking rock.
We are lucky to have a landscaper for a friend, who just happens to have some wonderful large machinery for moving rocks, topsoil, bark, or whatever else we need. He parks some of his equipment on our 10 acres, and in exchange, I get loads of mulch, topsoil, or rocks for the garden.
October 16th, 2009 at 11:59 pm
I absolutely love stone, and have several boulders and smaller rocks in my front and back garden. I can’t tell you how many times i’ve moved those suckers! I use a 2 x 4 to get them up and then just roll them along… my neighbors think i’m nuts… and i guess i am a bit… loving reading about your stone work!