Eroding the High Road

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While the photo above does not portray the erosion of the road which threatens to lock us into a very poor and sporadic alternative route, it does show the same severity of creek erosion at the very heart of this latest concern. You can see the wide and biting swing of the creek into the road bank above it. The creek has condemned as much as a half mile of road at a time with its ravenous appetite. Such stretches of road on our private lands were never restored for grazing by their principal users when they no longer served their immediate purposes. In other words, we were losing ground on both sides; to the wild and unpredictable creek and to those who sought to avoid it at the cost of our good and solid lands.
. I cautiously stepped a few feet closer to the edge to show you what happens when the creek takes another bite and the clay walls submit to the logical consequences. Sometimes you are warned of imminent collapse when you see a long stress crack three foot in from the bank's top, sometimes not. It might support a mega-ton rig as it did this morning or it might let loose under something as light as our pick-up truck.

In these latter days, lawyers are driving to limit their corporate liabilities and their bean-counters are pressing for foolish nickel and dime cost savings. They are trashing previous policies of helping landowners in other non-cash ways and I am wondering if we should close access to roads on our private land which they build but refuse to maintain to reasonable safety standards. To me, liabilities exist on both sides of the fence but I see mostly us on the giving side lately. Any advice and suggestions on this one?
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In the meantime, we made our trip up top to explore new home site options. In a future post, I will show the site which Mark, Slim and I selected during Thursday's drive around. It is still highly tentative and largely rests in the hands of the newest and very rude gas player out here as to its feasibility at all. This new outfit has even appalled and ruffled the usually unflappable Slim with its 'because we can' attitude of insufferable arrogance and its shameful under-handedness so far. The bad apple has arrived and the rest of the barrel will suffer from their greed and callousness.

Photos above and below show part of the new access road if we choose to relocate. It is uniformly wider than the road we have endured for two years now and has the advantage that it does not traverse the creeks and wide washes that our current road does. It winds down from the mesa top to the canyon bottom and crosses the killer wash with the help of a very respectable bridge which is open 24/7. This is the same bridge which we hope to reach after enduring the goat path.
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If the Rat can make it out on our own crumbling canyon roads, then these roads will be a snap to navigate with minimal damage. The question is, will it make it that far without serious damage or complete disaster?
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