Installing a boardwalk across our wetland

Everything finally gelled and with the help of a lot of great volunteers we were finally able to install the boardwalk across a section of our wetland. There is now dry access from the edge of the Crane Prairie to the edge of the creek. It is also possible to walk along the edge of the creek for quite a ways. Mostly this route is across areas that were burned in the Fish & Wildlife Service burn of April 27.

The boardwalk was designed by Jim Hess, who also supervised installation. It is a noninvasive design, making no modifications of the wetland itself. The individual boardwalk units rest upon sections of telephone poles that were donated to Pleasant Valley Conservancy by Madison Gas & Electric Company. Near the start the walkway crosses a small creeklet on a bridge fabricated by Wickcraft Company of Madison, who kindly installed the bridge without charge (thanks, Brian Kuehn!).

The bridge was installed on November 12, 2009, and we started fabricating the walkway sections soon after. However, the heavy snows of early December kept us from taking delivery of the lumber. We were finally able to do the major construction of the 18 boardwalk units on December 18, 2009. See this link for details on construction. However, more heavy snows kept us from moving the units to the walkway site until late March 2010. Then we waited until the Fish & Wildlife Service burn was completed before doing the installation. Yesterday the weather was great; cool but sunny, perfect weather for this heavy construction job.

Ten volunteers made short work of the job: Jim Hess, Paul Michler, Rex Sohn, Susan Slapnick, Amanda Budyak, Bill Walters, Chris Noll, Gary Birch, Kathie Brock, and I.

The photo below shows one of the boardwalk sections being toted to its final resting place. We made 18 sections, although we only needed 17 to reach the creek.


The photo below shows one of the telephone pole sections being toted to its site. Obviously, these are fairly heavy.


The next photo below shows one of the 10 foot sections being set into place. Since the wetland was fairly flat, each section matched fairly well with those on each side of it, although there was some jumping up and down to make the final match work.


The sections were connected together by 2 foot spacer boards, held in place with large bolts. The intent of the design was to permit the sections to move in relation to each other as the wetland underwent changes.

The photo below shows two sections bolted together. Once they were connected, the final floor boards were screwed in place.


When we reached the creek, we installed a "tee" section at right angles, so that viewers can spread out a little. We plan to install another unit to enlarge this viewing site.



What is going to happen when we get a flood? One of our neighbors is convinced that the whole boardwalk will float away. However, Jim Hess has planned for this eventuality. A ten-foot long metal tube has been driven into the wetland next to each unit, and fastened to the unit by a metal bracket.

This boardwalk has two functions. The first is to permit visitors to get "into" the wetland, for bird and butterfly watching, and enjoyment of the area. The second is to give us access to the wetland for restoration purposes. We have never been able to really control invasive brush properly. There are lots of large honeysuckles along the creek. Now we will be able to start to deal with them.