The stairs project is not finished yet but should be done by the end of next week. The stairs are going to be quite the workout for our legs and heart and lungs. Not down so much, but going up is a really good exercise. Fortunately the creek bottom is such a cool place to be both literally and figuratively that we are going to spend quite a bit of time down by the creek.
They have to build another small platform and a shorter run of stairs, and the add hand rails and pickets under the hand rails. A whole lot of pickets.
From the top of the stairs, looking down to the first landing.
Hand rails are installed on this first section which makes this by far the most comfortable part of the stairs to navigate up or down.
From the first landing looking down to the second and largest platform.
There is enough room on the second platform for us to have a couple of chairs. It is a really good spot for bird watching because you can see the top of the trees where they like to hang out.
And looking down from the third landing to the fourth and final landing which will be much smaller than the ones above it.
Where the stairs end at this point is about two feet above the ground closest to the base of the stairs, and almost five feet at the end of the boards which are being used to locate where to install the next set of posts. The ground under the boards is very slick and steep with loose rocks. There is a climbing rope tied to the tree to the right of the stairs, but we were able to get down without resorting to using the rope, just by hanging onto the boards.
This view shows most of the stairs from the side. Dan had to be careful going under the boards at the bottom of the stairs; I just had to duck a little bit.
There are a lot of downed branches plus some small trees which had to be removed to make way for the stairs. We saw that the climate changes have killed off the majority of the Paper Birch which used to inhabit the creek drainage. Too bad. Those are such pretty trees.
There is an old abandoned road at the bottom of the slope which makes for easy walking up and down the creek.
Most of the trees are cedars. This really shows the ground which is a deep bed of needles.
I made a couple of movies, and I figured out how to put in links.
This link shows the creek itself.
This last week I finally started working on a yarn project. It was something to do while it was so hot outside, though the air conditioning and ceiling fan did conspire to blow a bit of very fine fibers all over the living room.
Stairs are coming along nicely! So I can do stair interval runs for fitness when I visit!