A 38 year old retaining wall. Installed entirely on one cold wet rainy day by CSS members on the last Saturday of Oct 1983.
The 1979 Nationals were held at Crestline and it caused safety concerns due to the extreme congestion on this 2 lane narrow road and no shoulders to park on. So the following year the CSS requested permission to create a 20 vehicle parking lot. By 1981 the Forest Service opened it up to bids to improve the site and regulate the flight activities. The CSS was one of 3 bidders.
In 1982 the CSS won the bid and received the permit.
The permit required excavating to make a wide shoulder on the south side to create the parking lot and build the retaining wall. By summer 1982 the excavation was complete but funds didn’t yet exist to create the wall. So as a temporary way to prevent driving onto launch, a chain link fence was installed full length from the outhouse to the downhill end of the dirt parking lot. The remains of that fence still encircle the outhouse.
By late 1983 the Forest Service was getting impatient with the CSS delays in installing the retaining wall. They said that the permit would be revoked if not completed by end of Oct.
With procrastination as an operating procedure, a work party date to hand dig, and pin together some 200 ties was set for the 29th.
The weather gods punished us with a cold windy rainy day. Some 25 brave pilots (most of the CSS membership) spent the day freezing. The central stairs were a design as we went process with half a dozen pilots making suggestions on the placement and choosing a best way to do it with minimal time wasted in the discussion due to the fact we were freezing. Get er done!
The Forest Service then gave us till end of 1984 to pave the lot. The expense would be 10 times the cost of the wall and roughly the equivalent of 8 years average CSS budget. And that, as they say, is another story.
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