Short Beach Project- A Conservative Challenge

[Kulindahr]

Thanks for all the great info and the pictures, Kuli.

I was wondering where this water was coming from. Now I know.

You've done a tremendous amount of work. I hope people who visit the beach appreciate what you've done for them.

A story you might appreciate:

See how the cliff below the spillway is eroded back? It's still eroding.

In engineering terms, it should have been two meters longer. If it had been, the erosion would have stopped a dozen years ago. Why, do you ask, does it stop where it does, then?

That's a county road, right? It has a certain distance from the center line as right-of-way. Along there, according to the maps, the right-of-way is fifty feet from the center line of the road. Below that, it's state land.

Take a tape and measure, and start at the yellow line down the center of the road. Get to where the spillway ends. Know what it reads?

Yep, fifty -- they shorted on the engineering to avoid bureaucratic paperwork.


Visitors to the trail love that one!

BTW, it rained at the trail today -- I loved working in the rain this time, because (1) it wasn't a heavy rain but mostly (2) it meant I didn't have to haul water along the work path on the hillside above to water all the new trees.


Trivia -- to see who's been really looking at the web site:

how many new trees got planted this year?

 

[Kulindahr]

No work at the beach today -- went to PRIDE.

But on the way back, for a break, I let Bammer run while I filled a "yard tub" with chunks of wood splintered off our trees during the winter storms -- they go to the project to provide ground cover and future nutrients.

And all the marshmallows I have left over from the marshmallow gun will go to the worms.

 

[JakeLucas]

Hope you had a good time at Pride.

And you might be surprised at how long marshmallows will last.

 

[Kulindahr]

Hope you had a good time at Pride.

And you might be surprised at how long marshmallows will last.

We're supposed to get rain again in a couple of days -- that melts them pretty well, then the earthworms come for them.

I have two more trees to plant tomorrow -- early, before the sun comes out. Then it's time to climb around the hillside giving all the new plants a dose of MiracleGro.

 

[JayHawk]

Kuli I have looked at the website but have no clue how many trees are planted there this year... I know you got a few planted that you didn't have to do and that is awesome.

I bet it was a gorgeous day out there. I always loved that part of the coast.

 

[Kulindahr]

Kuli I have looked at the website but have no clue how many trees are planted there this year... I know you got a few planted that you didn't have to do and that is awesome.

I bet it was a gorgeous day out there. I always loved that part of the coast.

It's in the blog -- latest entry, I think. Though I have a report the blog isn't working.

I'm actually thinking trying something a bit risky tomorrow: with the rain we just had, the surface of the bare clay hillside I'm battling to stabilize should be fairly firm. About thirty feet about the current work path there's a small cluster of alder trees with a patch of grass among them. If I can get up there with a foxglove and some columbines and native clover in my backpack, along with potting soil, and get them planted in that cluster, the clover will spread down the hill by runner, which will catch seeds from the foxglove and columbine, and I'll have a triangle growing downward so that by the time the work path gets there it will be green and developing actual soil.

It would be nice to get a pine three up there, too, and I do have a 4" seedling to work with, but that would be a luxury -- pine trees don't start actively contributing to soil building until about the fourth year, when they start dropping enough needles to build a mat.

I keep wishing someone would write a check big enough to eliminate the project debt (due to setting right vandalism and dealing with a couple of storms where it was either fix things, or spend three months cleaning up the wreckage and then starting a whole section again) and give us something to work with. For $2400, and a lot of preparation work, come next spring I could turn the whole rest of that hillside green (except the rock outcrops) in a matter of two months: wood chips, netting, rapelling down the slope with spikes to tug the netting to fit the countours, then more wood chips; let it settle a week or two then spread a mix of sawdust, dark soil, and native seeds. So long as no monsoons hit, by PRIDE next year everything would be sprouting.

But I enjoy the pace set by the rate at which the hillside sheds loose material too.

 

[JayHawk]

I understand your frustration. I always need to see something complete asap. However fate and reality force patience onto when we least expect it. It certainly sounds as if you have the whole project mapped out.

 

[Kulindahr]

I understand your frustration. I always need to see something complete asap. However fate and reality force patience onto when we least expect it. It certainly sounds as if you have the whole project mapped out.

Conceptually, yes. But the trail itself won't be getting any more attention until there are actual funds. The beauty of the slow, steady approach to the one hillside stabilization is that the only materials not from waste or salvage have been a large stack of biodegradable pots from clearance at a dollar store (nine for a dollar!), and potting soil for salvaged seedlings -- but even much of that has been salvaged, for example when I was driving on a back road once with a friend, we were commenting on the yard waste people dumped (illegally), when we rounded a curve and there was a mound of potting soil! After separating out dead flowers, we filled a number of five-gallon buckets with the stuff.

One problem is that we're an interesting collection of misfits, with no one capable of handling the nonsense the IRS requires to be an official NfP, or we could try for grants......

 

[JakeLucas]

Conceptually, yes. But the trail itself won't be getting any more attention until there are actual funds. The beauty of the slow, steady approach to the one hillside stabilization is that the only materials not from waste or salvage have been a large stack of biodegradable pots from clearance at a dollar store (nine for a dollar!), and potting soil for salvaged seedlings -- but even much of that has been salvaged, for example when I was driving on a back road once with a friend, we were commenting on the yard waste people dumped (illegally), when we rounded a curve and there was a mound of potting soil! After separating out dead flowers, we filled a number of five-gallon buckets with the stuff.

One problem is that we're an interesting collection of misfits, with no one capable of handling the nonsense the IRS requires to be an official NfP, or we could try for grants......

Misfits are my favorite people.

 

[bankside]

So out of curiosity, what would happen if this work is not done?
Inaccessibility?
Injury to visitors? Sensible visitors or reckless ones?
Loss of habitat? Extinction of endangered species?

Just curious. In Edmonton, we have a deep river valley, with roads alongside it like "Whitemud Drive" and "Whitemud Road," and "Whitemud Place." Not surprisingly the sharp banks are made of white mud and often give way, slumping or sliding into the river.

Well, actually, to a few luxury home owners with spectacular valley views, it was surprising, and indeed erosion has claimed a couple of lives over the decades, and more than a few properties.

But the point is, engineering consultants or not, "slope retention strategies" or not, city law suits over building permits or not, it's just a natural landform in search of an equilibrium. And, not surprisingly, both the "before" and "after" of a landslide are beautiful.

That being said, I've never been one to stand in the way of taming things like gravity and surface tension. But, I am curious to know what is the critical payoff for this spectacular area compared to doing nothing and keeping it as a place of beauty known only to those in the know?

 

[Kulindahr]

So out of curiosity, what would happen if this work is not done?
Inaccessibility?
Injury to visitors? Sensible visitors or reckless ones?
Loss of habitat? Extinction of endangered species?

Just curious. . . . .

That being said, I've never been one to stand in the way of taming things like gravity and surface tension. But, I am curious to know what is the critical payoff for this spectacular area compared to doing nothing and keeping it as a place of beauty known only to those in the know?

If all work stopped right now, within three years there would be collapses on the actual trail, in the uncompleted sections; collapses would increase the danger and open the likelihood of increased erosion; within four years there would be new slides on the upper hillside with the potential of reaching the road, even blocking it. On the dam face... the terracing and planting left incomplete wouldn't likely pose any problem there, because what's in place is planted and the tree roots are down into the construction rock/boulders, so none of that is going anyplace; OTOH not finishing it would mean rain falling above there on the dam would continue to drain underneath, risking the sub-surface erosion of soil and contributing to instability on the trail itself.

I doubt things would go back to the four or five dozen annual ambulance visits, but I can see it getting to four or five annually within ten years. OTOH, if the project were brought back into the black, so the steps could be finished and say three more years of work on the dam face and the upper slope done, I'd be willing to guarantee ten or twelve years of good stability (barring the 8.0-9.2 earthquake the area is expecting, and the coming collapse of the dam due to rising sea level). Then if I could get a Boy Scout troop to adopt it for regular care, I'd call it good for twenty (though by then the dam collapse may be inevitable).


BTW, status as "a place of beauty known only to those in the know" was lost in 2000, when a tourist magazine published an article about it, and we started getting a regular stream of snow birds and other wanderers... then at least three motels, one twenty miles away, started featuring it as a suggested destination... and then the guides at the Cape Meares Lighthouse started telling people that the beach they could see below had a trail to it.

 

[rareboy]

Well, I will be matching the donations of Jayhawk and Jack for the project; certainly a few others here should be able to do this as well.

While this doesn't eliminate all the debt by any means, perhaps it does give some impetus for local matching fundraising as well.

 

[Kulindahr]

Well, I will be matching the donations of Jayhawk and Jack for the project; certainly a few others here should be able to do this as well.

While this doesn't eliminate all the debt by any means, perhaps it does give some impetus for local matching fundraising as well.

No, it doesn't eliminate all the debt, but it has accomplished something not even reached before Thanksgiving the last two years: enough donations have now, thanks to JUB, come in that the year's interest on the debt has been covered, and the balance will be going down. That means we can actually buy a few things without making the debt balance higher than last year!

Right now I'm thinking a pack of a dozen pairs of gloves, so when people come to help out they're 'covered', and maybe twenty feet of flexible pipe to set up a second sluice, for getting dirt fill down to a collapsing area on the far end of the dam from the current sluice -- if we can get that filled and terraced in the next few weeks, and sow shade-tolerant clover on it, it will be storm-resistant by winter.


A request to all who have helped out (and everyone else, too): please put a link to the project page on your facebook!

 

[frankfrank]

Misfits are my favorite people.

 

[Kulindahr]

Finishing the books for last year reminded me of the support from a bunch of you here at JUB. It was very satisfying to see the debt balance go down for once.

I'm happy to report that all but two of the forty seedlings that went in last year are doing fine. One of those two got torn out by some animal digging, and the other vanished under a 'delta' of mud washed down by a torrential rain following a freeze. I'm not so sure about some of the ferns; even buried they'll often pop back up.


Anyway, thanks to all of you who helped. I don't know if rareboy's offer is still open, but there are a couple here who said they'd donate... but haven't. I keep hoping. . .