June 22, 2015
Upper Platte River
Honor MI
MONSTER DECK REMOVAL
6 of us had seen this piece of debris and we all had our ideas of how to
attack it. We all gave it a whirl but to no avail but then Bob Hoxie did his thing
and it floated right out (sort of).
Bob cut it in half length-wise and we pulled the pieces out one at a time.
It worked great after we got the hang of how the winch worked in the
current. There was a nice large chunk of cement right where we needed it
to be to anchor to and it even had holes drilled in it that were the perfect
size for our tools to connect to. We were lucky.
Our crew - minus Norm the photographer and John who arrived after a meeting.
We got started by removing most of the railings.
Then Bob cut it in half and we pulled the first piece out upstream with the winch.
Then we cut it in smaller pieces light enough to carry and took it up to the trailer.
Second half !!!!!!!
Repeat !!!!!!!
Bob Hoxie with a happy homeowner who wanted this off his beach.
So what used to look like this-
Now looks like this.
I want to thank Mike Jones, Bob Hoxie, David Fred, Harold Lassers, Paul Ton
and John Mesch for taking the time to help get this very nasty and difficult
piece of garbage out of one of our favorite rivers.
Oh and BTW - the best part is that 100% of this wood and material has been recycled
and re-purposed for future use. None was placed in a landfill.
And THANK YOU to the Adams Chapter of Trout Unlimited and the
American Canoe Association for helping us buy the WINCH in
2014 that we needed today to get this deck out of the Upper Platte River.
Also, THANK YOU to the Bethlehem Lutheran Church Endowment
Fund of Traverse City for their help in 2015 with the funding for
specialized tools, ropes, fuel and hardware. Protecting God's
creation is a worthy use of this money.
Norm Fred