The photo above shows the route of our waterline through the 200 ft (60m.) fir forested area that we had to dig by hand, so we wouldn’t wreck the forest with a big backhoe. It shows how the route looks today.
The waterline is not buried under the brown path, but to the right side of it. I didn’t want our path to be over the line, because we couldn’t make the trench very deep and I wanted moss to regrow over the line to help insulate the line from the cold.,
Once we got the 2” poly pipe laid in the trench, we also covered it with sheets of old styrofoam insulation that they had torn out of the McBride hospital as they renovated it.
This area through the woods was the most tedious part of making the waterline. We had to use picks and pry bars, and even garden trowels, to dig out the trench through and under all of the rocks and tree roots. In the photo above you can see one big boulder that we had to dig under because it could not be moved.
Here are some more entries from my 1987 diary written during the time we were hand-trenching through this section of our waterline:
“Saturday- after lunch went up to dig on the waterline until 6:00. I made good progress until I ran into another rock wedged under some roots. I struggled with that until it was time to go home.
“Sunday- Spent the whole day, 9:00 until 4:00 digging. I got to the big boulder and hopefully the digging should be easier from there to the switchback.”
A few days later, after work:
“I dug again from 5:45 until 8:15. I was not overly enthusiastic, but did manage to get some done. I couldn’t really finish digging around the big boulder because I couldn’t lift some of the big rocks by myself.”
Monday, of the Labor Day long weekend:
I got more help digging the waterline trench.
“Kjell, who now wants to be a part of our waterline, joined Glen and I digging from 9:00 to 12:00, when we broke for lunch. We were able to rough out the trench all the way to the switchback. I came back at 1:00, Kjell joined me at 3:00, and we continued with our digging until 5.
“I ordered the pipe for our waterline. Gigi (the owner of Mrs. Nail’s house where James lives, gave me a $2,000 cheque for her share of the project. I called everyone to help dig the last leg of the trench, but I was the only one to show up and actually do the digging.
It should only take 4 more hours of hand digging to deepen that last bit of the trench to the switchback. Once we get there, the big backhoe can dig the trench along the road and to our houses.”
(Photo below) We dug and laid our pipe between the big boulder and the smaller moss-covered boulder to its right.
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