Spring is here, and we are busy!  You might think we took some time off because there have been no blogs from me, but quite the contrary.  It’s just that I’ve finally made time to share stuff with you.

Let’s check out the walls we are installing in the front of the house.  After extensive design discussions with Molly LaPatra, the architect for this project, we came up with a boulder and steel concept for the slope.  This is something we have never done before, nor seen anywhere.   But that didn’t stop us.

Time to bring in the boulders.

Lose the snow and bring on the steel!

We installed the drainage and have accelerated the oxidation process to hustle the color change from orange to black.  Now it’s just a waiting game.  I’ll post more photos once the soil and plantings are installed.

Well, where do I start with Camp Muir?

I first heard about it from Carroll Vogel from Sahale, a company that mostly built suspension bridges and trails but were experts at remote location construction. Through their contacts with national parks, they were handed the Camp Muir project.

Camp Muir is a collection of stone buildings built in the 20′s and 30′s by the military. On the South slope of Mt. Rainier (14,400 ft. elev.), it was transferred to the national parks when NPS was formed and ever since, it has been the mid-point resting place for those climbing to the summit of Mt. Rainier. The Camp is at an elevation of 10,080 feet–3,000 feet above the tree line. The structures were originally dry stacked stone with wood pole and wood plank roof. In 1991 Camp Muir was placed on the National Register of Historic Places and is part of the Mt. Rainier National Historic Landmark District.

Our task was to rebuild the Public shelter, the (then) Cook shelter and totally reconstruct the “men’s privy’ (a small stone structure that had partially fallen due to erosion). The Public shelter is the largest structure at the camp and was repaired over the years with mortar and torch down roofing…many, many layers of torch down roofing.  We were given picture of the structure from the 20′s and 30′s and told that as part of the Register of Historic Places, it was very important to restore it to it’s original condition. As you can imagine, Wind, snow and ice had taken its toll on the structures over its more than 80 years in existence.

With Sahale as the general contractor, Avalon was hired to do all the stonework while Sahale would rebuild the roof, interior, and a multitude of other tasks. The first year of 3 years that we worked on Camp Muir and Panorama Point structures was all about Camp Muir. Highline Helicopter service was used to ferry up over 20,000 lbs of building materials and supplies, as well as pouring the concrete roof with their larger helicopter.

The Sahale and Avalon crews worked in shifts of up to 4 weeks at a time. We commandeered the public shelter for our crews to live in while they worked. The commute to and from Muir was….challenging…. A three hour drive from Seattle, and at least a 5 hour hike to Muir from Paradise if you are in great shape, 8 hour hike if you’re not. The latter part of the hike (2.5 miles) passes over Muir snowfield. There were no trails on the snowfield and if you went too far to the East or West, you would end up in either the Nisqually or Paradise glaciers. Either one is not a happy occasion for hikers.  The elevation at 10,000 feet is enough to give you altitude sickness which can be serious, even life threatening if not recognized and treated early. Fortunately no Avalon or Sahale crew member was seriously affected. My experience of 10k altitude was a raging headache the first day then just the added effort it took to do anything with limited oxygen. Imagine climbing stairs at altitude while carrying a bag of concrete…good times…

Take a look at the pictures and you will see that the Sahale / Avalon team was a good one. We drilled and split boulders, cleared snow and permafrost, melted our own water in a contraption we called the Shackelton constructed from 3 beer kegs, plywood and gas grill parts. We sourced all our stone from the nearby fractured rock slope. We got to know what it’s like to live in a place where there are no trees, frequent avalanches, snow storms with up to 70 mph winds, summer night temperatures in the teens, volcanic dust that gets into everything and the best views of the mountains and stars you could imagine. We restored all the stonework. When we had to move the men’s privy ten feet further in from the edge of the cliff, We numbered, took pictures, removed the stones, cataloged them behind the public shelter, retrieved the stones that had fallen down the cliff, and rebuilt the thing exactly as is was, stone for stone. We added a new concrete footing, new wood door and a steel and concrete roof. The Public shelter got all its stonework rebuilt, an interior makeover, new doors, new steel and concrete roof and even skylights. The Cook shelter got the same treatment.

I could go on and on about the stories of wild things that happened up there and people we met. Let’s just say it was an experience I will never forget and a bond of friendship with some of the people I worked with up there that will stay with me for a lifetime.

- Keith

Week 2 begins with rock wall building and forming for a concrete wall. This is a different style of rock wall than we usually install. It’s inspired by the homeowner and the designer Scott Mantz. There’s a little more natural feeling and flow to this retaining wall. We salvaged stone from the existing stone wall and added Bandera granite as well as igneous river boulders for a rounded, natural look. Rubble from the demolished concrete wall and concrete walkway are used as free draining fill behind the wall along with 3″ spawl (angular stones).

- keith

Removal of concrete and excavation for a new retaining wall has begun at Keith’s Capitol Hill project.  With Scott Mantz as the designer, We set out on our quest for a garden makeover. Some unintentional pruning of the street tree was the only side effect of having an excavator on site (knock on wood as the excavator is still there). Otherwise using the jackhammer attachment for the excavator was good fun for Justin and Matt.

Matt Eads, owner of Terrain Build is getting this one going for us and Ken will be taking over in a week or so to start installing the pavers and irrigation system.

Can I just say that our clients are the best? We renovated their backyard in 2006 so it’s a pleasure to see them and to see the kids, who were just babies when we were last there. They’ve really sprouted up!

Late January came again to the Avalon crews, which meant it was Keith’s birthday and time to jump in the cold water.  Do you recall last year’s plunge?  We painted our backs and stuck this image on Valentine’s Day cards to our past clients – the Avalon Alum.Last year at that same time, we were building a landscape for Kira and Chris in Washington Park that included a sport court.  Here is a photo from last winter.

This year, Kira and Chris let us return to their yard to play some basketball as a warm up to our jump off the dock just down the hill.  It was a blast!  Lots of fun to go back and use something we built.

So after us managers got beaten up by the crew (the trash talking all week was a much tighter match than the actual game), we went down to the home of another Avalon Alum in Madison Park to test our fortitude.  We don’t have any photos but Ken set up his camera so here is a 1:20 clip of a bunch of guys trying to pretend that really cold water is our natural element.