Garden in Gorge-Chinampa

Envisioning a chinampa like garden in bottom of gorge.  Using the nutrient rich river sediment to build up the beds in the low areas.  Perhaps the thermal gain of the rock will help with growth.

A Strong Tower

A cliff hugging edifice enthralls my imagination.  Shiny and impregnable-thumbing it's nose at the paint huffing reprobates and enviro-mental Taos come lately SoCal soy milk sippers.

Bam!  Right there!

Spring 2015-Return to the Rio

After many weeks fantasizing about places on the coast or on some lazy river, my attention has returned to the Rio Grande.  JD and Bea accompanied.  Jen always wants at least one person to come with me lest I fall off a cliff and can't get up.   I am trying to limit the work end of things to one bite sized project a trip so the kids don't feel like all they do is toil when they come up here.

The project this trip was to get a large construction site box to the bottom of the gorge.  The zipline, though untested with this kind of weight (100 lbs?) seemed the easiest and most feasible approach.  So we humped the heavy box up the sending ledge,  hooked her to the petzl trolley and away she went.  Great fun.  Beatrice admits that coming here is more fun now that we don't have to haul stuff up and down the gorge for hours on end.

Last night an epic battle was fought between the wind and our tarp tent.  It was not the most restful night of my life.  This experience convinced me that our next project needs to be constructing an 8x12 shed where we can camp out of the elements.  Bought six 10' cedar posts in Alamosa tonight.  Something to work on next trip.  Thinking of springing for bunk camp cots-four across to accomodate the fam.  Maybe it would be more sensible to construct 2 such sheds with an open windfree are in between.

Safety Goals on the Gorge

There are two main safety concerns when it comes to kids and the Gorge: lethal falls and drowning.  I was working on the fall side of safety when all of my equipment left onsite was stolen putting an abrupt stop to that project.  Now that I have purchased the equipment again I an start putting in safety rail.

The safest route we could find while still remaining within our 275 ft of river frontage finishes with an 8 and 18 foot ladder section at the bottom. The shelf between these two ladders is rather steeply pitched so I am installing a pipe railing in this section at this time.  The lava rock is rather heterogenous and so i find that one moment I'm drilling through  butter and the next my bit is being destroyed.

The bottom of the Gorge is where I want to be. The whoosh of rapids, the surround sound  of trickling water is a treat for one born and raised in an arid land.

Am finding little niches and grottos on the face of the gorge. Plan on taking a cue from the Anasazi and stashing items in these inaccesible areas.  Purchased some iron security bars from Pieces consignment in Taos.  Plan on affixing them along a 3 ft ledge so that would be thieves will think twice before attempting to steal from us again.

Zipline Baggage handler

So down by the river is where we want to be but one of the bummers that go with that is huffing our stuff in and out of the Gorge. There are cactus strewn ledges and two ladder runs. A pedestrian should be on his guard. A sherpa should be doubly concerned. Too dangerous. No fun (at least that's what the kids told me).

So I found a straight shot from up top to the big rock at our camp site and ran about 130 ft of 1/4" aircraft cable from point to point.  I then connected a boat ratchet up top and used paracord connected to a pulley on the wire to transport stuff up and down.  Stuff going down is a matter of gravity and friction braking with the paracord.  Going up I use a drill attached to the small ratchet 3/4" gear nut to power the ascent. My pulley is a petzl zipline trolley with black diamond carabiners. I used a walmart purchased come along at the bottom, 3/8" rawl 3" climbing bolts and 2 fixe climbing anchors on top and bottom.  So far so good.  I am a bit leery of working with rope (fingers getting caught, etc).  Nonetheless, it is a step toward making our time here more relaxing and less toilsome.