Path Work - August (Glencoe)

To say that August has been a wet month is probably a big understatement, we've rarely had a day that it hasn't rained on us.  We have had some beautifully sunny days, but we've also had some absolute down pours, usually when we're already at the site pretty high up the path.  Still on the Coire nan Lochan path, the two sites we've been working on in August have been at the bedrock at the top of the path where it begins to disappear and half way down the path at one of the scree sites.

To begin with we finished off the stone pitching we had been adding onto of the bedrock to help make it a lot more accessible and easier to walk on, taking people away from the sides which are much more difficult to navigate than they look.  

We then carried on the stone pitching above this slab of bedrock where the water running down the hill had produced a large, slippery gully, fitting the stones in between the bedrock and tufts of vegetation that was left.  

Here a lot more work was needed than we had initially thought, including a revetment, but thankfully we were able to find the amount of stones we actually needed to complete the work.  

As a rule of thumb you always need a lot more stones (and I mean A LOT more) than you might think for stone pitching. 

Due to the amount and speed of the water that flows down this section we decided to add a double water bar at the top of the stone pitching to help move as much of this as possible off path.  Later my work colleague added a very large ditch to help catch an amazingly large amount of water from the side of the hill and channel it through this water bar into the gully below. 

And then there was more stone pitching to a section that was also just another deep, slippery gully.  This took us over the last bit of bedrock we were needing to work on and onto the much flatter final section.  It's interesting watching people now walk over this section of path.  Before it was more of a scramble, with people often having to use their hands to help get up over the top.  Now they walk up with relative ease, though the path is still pretty steep and unfortunately we can't really do anything about that. 

Once the bedrock section was finished, including packing, landscaping, and adding surfacing, we moved onto the last upper section of the path.  A couple of step rises were added just below a water bar that was already there from previous work to help hold the surfacing in place and then we needed to work on this original bar.  

The ditching on either side had become overgrown and was no longer properly channelling water both to and from the bar.  This meant that is was just flowing back onto the path.  The ditching on both sides was re-dug and made much larger, hopefully increase the amount of time before it became overgrown again, and we did get to see our handy work on a very rainy day.  There's a lot of water now being caught by those ditches and not now heading down the path - always satisfying.

Before

After

After

The water bar was then turned into a double water bar to help hold the surfacing back, reducing the chance of the bar become clogged again (especially as it took us a while to find the original liners after quite a bit of digging).  A small revetment on the hill side attached to the water bar meant that we could channel water coming from an upper section of peat into the water bar as well.  

Then it was more step rises and stone pitching until we came to the point where the path began to disappear and people are able to make their own way to the upper paths.  This was probably the most satisfying section to build as we were needing to find very specific and unusually shaped stones to fit the space we had.  It's always good when they all fit together, like they were meant to be, and look like a natural part of the rocks surrounding them.  Many probably won't even realise that these stones have been added.

Finally we added a revetment with a large end stone to help navigate the water off this section of path and into a gully which led to the original water bar we had already been working on.

And then we started heading back down the path, carrying out final bits of landscaping and tidying as we went.  I also added what is probably the worst made cairn ever (note to self - definitely need practise on this) to help navigate people up the bedrock at one of the easiest routes.  Thankfully a work colleague redid the cairn and it's now much better - the photo is of my one so I wouldn't judge it on that.

Back down the path we are back at one of the previous scree sites which has already been showing signs of damage from the sheer amount of water we've had falling here recently.   The large amount of rain had led to channels forming on the path, removing surfacing from some of the step rises we had placed and increasing the size of the gully in the path just down from this area.  

The first thing we did was move some more larger stones down to the path to hold back more of the scree on the hill side which was being washed onto the path.  

Then a double water bar was added just above the previously built step rises, made relatively deep to catch the amount of water travelling at this point.

Finally, now that we had channelled most of the water off the path, we added some step rises to the section just below the scree site where the gully was forming.  This was to raise the path again and to help hold the surfacing in place, reducing any future erosion.  

Because this gully had also begun to undermine a revetment previously built on the hill side we also had to add another row of stones below the previous ground level section to hold it all in place.  As with all of the built features, this section needed to be packed, landscaped and surfacing added.

Not a bad months worth of work when you add in the fact that we had quite a few days of high winds and heavy rain battering against us.  A couple of times the wind has been so strong it's made it difficult just to stand up let alone get some actual work done.  But then it wouldn't be Scotland, and certainly not Glencoe, if you didn't get some really bad weather followed by some glorious periods of warm sun which you enjoy, suspicious of what's coming next.