Published on April 29, 2016
The area surrounding Yellow Pine is stunning – steep mountains, tall trees and boulders shooting up from the hillsides. In March, a section of this beautiful scene changed and caused big problems for drivers.
Large boulders and trees fell across the East Fork Road, blocking traffic and preventing local community members from getting through. Valley County, who is responsible for maintaining that stretch of road, asked if we could help. We know how important these roads are for the community and we quickly sent two people to help along with their equipment.
To clear the roads, we first needed to remove the tree so we had better access to the boulders. We tackled the trees while Valley County employees drilled into the first boulder so it could be broken into smaller pieces. Once we took care of the tree, we moved the smaller rocks out of the way and joined the others in breaking up the boulders.
As you can imagine, breaking up a bolder is a tedious process. We drilled holes into the boulder so it could be filled with low impact blasting materials to break it into smaller rocks. We had to repeat this process several times but eventually we were able to clear the way for the community.
Working with Valley County, it took nearly ten hours to clear the road.
