Hard to believe it but winter is just around the corner!
We spent an afternoon installing the new sign for the Rochester Gap Trail. It's a great short 0.3 mile hike/bike up to a viewpoint overlooking the gap.
Galen and mom did a little trailwork as well.
I've been slowly working on the toddler tow extension. Added 3 new towers to double the length (now 325' long).
Jay fabricated two more return wheels for the big tow so I was able to get those up on the new tower brackets that I installed last spring.
Fall is also a great time to ride bikes.. into leaf piles!
Who said you need snow to go sledding?
I also started building a drop jump. The idea is to create a manmade cliff feature. At first the board was waaay too high.
I brought it down a bit so that the ramp only slopes up a little bit.
It's a pretty solid 10' drop but with 2-3' of powder the landing should be fun.
We also got the rope up on the big tow. It went smoothly except for the fact that we had to jump back and forth between two come alongs to get the rope stretched onto the tires. We're thinking a battery powered winch might make it a lot easier next time.
With the first snowfall it made it feel like it was time to rally to get the toddler tow upgrades done.
We bought 1200' of 5/8" twisted poly-dac rope for $430 (including shipping). Only needed 650' (they come in 600' or 1200' ft rolls) so a friend of ours who also wants to build a small ski hill for their kids in moretown is going to buy the extra 550' ft from us.
I stopped by Middle Mtn to see if Casey had any old extra riding mower wheels hanging around. Sure enough he had several in the junk pile out back. The extra third rim was used to lock the none drive wheel. Jay welded a bolt pattern so that the other two wheels could be bolted together. The duel wheel setup is the way to go. I flipped one wheel on backwards so that both tires could be inflated without having tonremove the wheels. The rope sits in the groove in between the two tires.
The day after we hung up the rope our neighbor showed up.. ready to ski?
Bill (the master splicer) offered to splice the toddler tow rope so he came up and spliced the ends together. Later that day I fired up the mower and the new drive wheel (along with the new rope) seems to be working really well. Looking forward to testing it out once the snow returns!
