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catsp
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catsp
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 Tue May 23, 2023 5:26 pm |
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Anne Elk
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Anne Elk
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Tue May 23, 2023 5:36 pm |
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Those car owners ought to figure out how to get back in contact with each other so they can collectively hire a helicopter, as was done in that Montana video. It would probably cost less - fewer cars, shorter distance. They could even put up a request for donations on Go Fund Me. The public has contributed a lot of money for less on that site.
"There are yahoos out there. It’s why we can’t have nice things." - Tom Mahood
"There are yahoos out there. It’s why we can’t have nice things." - Tom Mahood
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altasnob
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altasnob
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Tue May 23, 2023 5:59 pm |
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It looks to me that if they wait until the snow melts, and the creek goes down to a trickle, they can push some dirt around and drive out. That slope above them is not that big so not that much snow melt. The creek in the bottom of this picture looks big but that's because the Spirit Lake tunnel outflow is right below the road.
 Anne Elk
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fourteen410
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Looks like a team hiked in yesterday to retrieve some USDA equipment.
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Ski
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Ski
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Fri May 26, 2023 6:53 am |
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| Chief Joseph wrote: | | The concern about the minimal chance of a vehicle leaking fluids enough to cause an environmental concern is simply hyperbole. |
^ this.
I sold engines for a living. I worked in the automotive industry my entire life.
You can park vehicles for a LONG LONG LONG time and never see a drop of any oils or fluids hit the ground.
My arbitrarily assigning a mid-1990s date to my statement above is only because that's when U.S. auto makers seem to have finally gotten their acts together. Sealing technology improved significantly during the last couple decades of the 20th century and tolerances became much tighter as emission control regulations were tightened correspondingly.
But... if you're short on things to worry about, by all means add that to your list.
"I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each."
"I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each."
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altasnob
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altasnob
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Fri May 26, 2023 7:35 am |
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Wouldn't leaving the vehicles up there long term increase the chance of rodents and such chewing threw the various rubber hoses? I had a mouse make a house in my engine, and from there into my glove box, camping one night in the Teanaway. Took him out to Ancient Lakes for a day and then back to Seattle before I realized it.
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Dick B
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Dick B
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Fri May 26, 2023 9:22 am |
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| altasnob wrote: | | Wouldn't leaving the vehicles up there long term increase the chance of rodents and such chewing threw the various rubber hoses? |
I would agree that long term exposures to rodents could be the biggest problem. Several years ago my wife and I made an overnight stop at a campground near John Day. I looked around the campground and I saw nearly everyone had the hoods up on their vehicles. I asked a camping neighbor why this was so. He said if you didn't, the pack rats would move in overnight and make their nests. I left my hood up that night.
Another time I took my vehicle in for a service. I was visiting with the service manage when the tech came in with a story about the car he was working on. He said he pulled the air filter, and it was completely stuffed with sunflower seed husks. We all got a big chuckle out of that. Later I went to pay for the service and the same tech came by and said "is that your car that had all the husks"? I thought what the h***? I got home and checked the bag of sunflower bird seed had in the garage, and it had a hole in it so I was sure the mice were getting into it. I set out a set of traps, and got 13 mice before that ended that siege.
The video showed 12 people and a dog being airlifted out. How many cars did that relate to?
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catsp
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catsp
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Fri May 26, 2023 9:42 am |
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Dick B
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Dick B
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Fri May 26, 2023 12:00 pm |
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| altasnob wrote: | | It looks to me that if they wait until the snow melts, and the creek goes down to a trickle, they can push some dirt around and drive out. That slope above them is not that big so not that much snow melt. The creek in the bottom of this picture looks big but that's because the Spirit Lake tunnel outflow is right below the road.
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Looking at the arial confirms that most of the water is coming out from the tunnel below the washout. A minor amount is coming from the highlands behind, and the rapid snow melt probably caused the mudslide that took out the bridge and a portion of the road.
It has been a number of years since I was at Johnson Ridge, so I don't remember that much about the road. A couple of questions. How much water comes down the creek from above during the summer, and during a normal runoff during the winter? How high was the bridge above the stream bed it was crossing?
I ask these questions because an alternate bridge fix might be feasible. This is a SWAG as I have no data that would support the suggestion I am making. When I lived in Texas, low water crossings were a fixture out in the Hill Country. There are a lot of drainages that carried little water in the summer, but could become a raging torrent in the event of a heavy rain. The crossings had culverts which carried low flows, with a concrete apron above. Sometimes the trickles just ran over the concrete. I never heard of one washing out during a flood. The problem was people trying to cross during high flows and getting washed downstream. Some succumbed to their mistake.
This might be something that the engineers could look at. It could be a fairly cheap fix, open the road quickly and be designed to withstand any future events like the one that just occurred. Just a thought.
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treeswarper
Alleged Sockpuppet!
Joined: 25 Dec 2006
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treeswarper
Alleged Sockpuppet!
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Fri May 26, 2023 4:41 pm |
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The 2801 road along the Cispus River had concrete crossings built with trash racks on the upstream side. They worked, but the road continued to wash out in different places and I think they gave up. Too bad because it was an alternate route for when the 23 road had troubles.
It's just unstable country and roads are going to have troubles.
What's especially fun about sock puppets is that you can make each one unique and individual, so that they each have special characters. And they don't have to be human––animals and aliens are great possibilities
What's especially fun about sock puppets is that you can make each one unique and individual, so that they each have special characters. And they don't have to be human––animals and aliens are great possibilities
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Dick B
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Dick B
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Fri May 26, 2023 7:09 pm |
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| treeswarper wrote: | | The 2801 road along the Cispus River had concrete crossings built with trash racks on the upstream side. They worked, but the road continued to wash out in different places and I think they gave up. Too bad because it was an alternate route for when the 23 road had troubles.
It's just unstable country and roads are going to have troubles. |
I have never been into the area of which you speak.
Yes, unstable soils can certainly be a problem in the Northwest. The St. Helens area must be heavy to pumice and light soils which would be subject to erosion. The hill country of Texas was pretty stable. The soil was caliche on top of limestone. Very little erosion or other problems that I can recall.
We have certainly had our share of construction problems here in Oregon due to unstable soil conditions. Recently ODOT spent $12.5 million for an overpass south of Bend only to scrap the project because the whole thing began to settle. It still sits there, unfinished, after 6 years. Another was a reroute of Highway 20 heading to Newport from Corvallis. They built a series of concrete bridges on unstable soil. The project bid at $150million and finished at $220million over budget. It went 10 years beyond its intended completion date. Lots of lawsuits ensued. Another time they built a new high school on the west side of Bend. The athletic field was built on top of an old pumice deposit. After some heavy rains, large sections of the field cratered. They had to dig out all the old pumice and back fill with regular dirt. Again, big bucks to remedy.
It looks like bridges, large arched culverts, low water crossings or what have you are all subject to failure. I guess the thing to is study the problem and try to pick the best option.
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Ski
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Joined: 28 May 2005
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Ski
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Sun May 28, 2023 2:06 pm |
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| altasnob wrote: | | Wouldn't leaving the vehicles up there long term increase the chance of rodents and such chewing threw the various rubber hoses? |
Rodents don't have much of a propensity for chewing up the rubber hoses in automotive engine compartments.
Most rodent problems with automobiles that I have seen or dealt with were directly caused by storing pet food in close proximity to parked vehicles:
When I was working in Yelm, a customer came in and wanted a price quote on a case of those "Little Tree" car freshners. (The word is spelled "freshner" by The Car Freshner Corporation of Watertown, New York.)
When I asked the customer why they would want an entire case, they related the story to me:
Their car had been parked in the back end of the carport for a couple years, as they very rarely drove it. Just outside the back door, under cover of the carport, is where they stored to two fifty pound bags of dog food for their two labs.
The resident mice discovered the dog food, and a convenient storage facility in the rocker panels, cowl vents, and engine compartment of the car.
I gave them a quote. Not sure what ever became of the car, as removal of dog kibble from inside cowl vents generally requires complete disassembly of the vehicle. (e.g, removing the firewall from the body.*)
For some animals, food isn't a requirement:
After the dealership returned my older sister's Acura MDX after a full-blown detail job, she parked it on the side of the house and dressed it up with the new nylon taffeta "car cover" she had just purchased to protect it from the elements.
The resident Eastern Gray Squirrels found the engine compartment to be just exactly the right size and shape to build a really fancy nest, using the underhood insulation and various and sundry other pieces of vegetation to completely stuff the entire engine compartment full of squirrel nest, pine cones, and other lovelies.
The second detail job, including a replacement underhood insulation blanket, was only about another $2500.00.
The one that really lights up the eyes of modern-day automotive journeyman dealership technicians, though, are the newer import vehicles with the "eco-friendly" wiring harnesses in which they used a vegetable based compound for insulation on the wiring.
My understanding from comments posted by line mechanics is that the stuff they used for insulation on these vehicles is like crack for some rodents - they simply cannot get enough of it. After they have destroyed the entire electrical system of the vehicle - usually resulting in the insurance company totalling it - they move on to the next victim.
Bottom line:
If you drive your vehicle on a regular basis, and you are not seeing brown splotches on your driveway caused by leaking oil, transmission fluid, power steering fluid, or hydraulic fluid, odds are you should be okay parking your vehicle at the top end of an abandoned dead-end mountain road for some time.
While admittedly some vehicles are literally ticking time bombs (e.g., Subaru head gaskets), it is very rarely the case where all of a sudden a vehicle decides all on its own to dump a bunch of fluid on the ground.
In over fifty years of driving - and I've driven a hell of a lot of miles - I've had it happen exactly once - when the front pump seal blew on the TH400 transmission in my Pontiac and puked seven quarts of automatic transmission fluid all over a parking lot. Serendipitously, it just happened to be the parking lot where a transmission shop was located and the guys working there were kind enough to push it into one of the bays and call me a cab. (I remember thinking that the $600 I paid for a rebuilt transmission with a 90-day warranty seemed like a lot of money at the time.)
You're thinking about this too hard. Stop worrying so much. The vehicles are not going to leach any more contaminants into the soil or water than the asphalt-paved road surface itself.
(* addendum: When Larry and I were working on a 1965 Ford Mustang hardtop for a guy, we had stripped off the outer fender quarter panels and the inner fender panels and were just getting to where the seams were between the cowl vents and the firewall when a federal warrant was issued on the building and its owner - something about which we were unaware - and the vehicle was impounded as part of a massive drug seizure operation, so we never actually got to partake ourselves in the unmitigated joy of detaching welded body seams from each other - at least not on any Ford-built vehicles.)
"I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each."
"I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each."
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Pyrites
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Pyrites
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Mon May 29, 2023 10:39 pm |
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Keep Calm and Carry On?
Heck No.
Stay Excited and Get Outside!
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