Niagara Falls welcomes roughly 9 million visitors every year, and the sprawling parks in the surrounding region are also a popular destination for outdoor enthusiasts. But much of the essential maintenance work that ensures these natural havens are safe for visitors takes place behind the scenes. Over time, the cliffs that hug the Niagara River can erode, causing rocks to tumble onto the walking and hiking trails below. Statewide rope access coordinator Andy Chouinard took us along on a recent operation at Devil's Hole State Park to show us how his crew fearlessly scales steep ledges to manage the loose dolomite that would pose a danger to hikers.
For more, visit:
www.parks.ny.gov
niagarafallsstatepark.com
For more, visit:
www.parks.ny.gov
niagarafallsstatepark.com
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00 (footsteps)
00:02 This jagged sheet of rock is hanging 200 feet
00:07 above a walking trail next to the Niagara River.
00:10 It's already loose, and if it falls,
00:13 it could mean serious injury to hikers on the path below.
00:17 That's where the Rope Access Team comes in.
00:21 If they do their job just right,
00:24 most of Niagara Falls' nine million yearly visitors
00:27 will never even know they were here.
00:30 (footsteps)
00:32 - First jump of the day.
00:36 - Am I scared?
00:39 Am I scared?
00:41 I have a healthy respect, that's all.
00:43 - This cliff is located at Devil's Hole State Park,
00:49 roughly four miles north of Niagara Falls.
00:53 Team members like Andy and Christian will scale the cliff
00:56 and maintain the crew's gear.
00:57 Later, Jake will clear dislodged rocks from the trail.
01:01 - If those rocks were to fall naturally,
01:02 there's nothing stopping them from coming
01:04 and just plowing through somebody that's on the trail.
01:06 So, very necessary work what we do here,
01:09 and you can see here all the rocks that come down.
01:11 They are pretty sizable and could cause some damage.
01:14 - It's a dangerous job.
01:16 Dehydration, injury, and inclement weather
01:19 are just some of the risks.
01:21 Thunderstorms are forecast today,
01:23 so the team is on high alert for signs of lightning,
01:26 which would endanger the crew.
01:28 - We won't work in lightning, that's about it.
01:32 We're gonna have fun.
01:35 Usually when we show this to people,
01:37 they say they didn't even know this existed.
01:39 - There are 12 members of today's crew,
01:41 four supervisors, including Andy, and eight technicians.
01:45 Today, their goal is to clear
01:48 this entire section of the cliff.
01:51 Their day begins at 7 a.m. at the maintenance shop,
01:54 where the team packs a variety of gear into vehicles
01:57 to take it to the access point above the trail.
01:59 - See, the fun thing about this is that I don't actually
02:03 jump with them every day, so today will be
02:05 one of the days I jump with them,
02:07 which is good 'cause I've been wanting to do this
02:09 for a while.
02:10 These are the guys who do it every single day,
02:12 and they're really, really good at it.
02:14 - After a short 10-minute drive, the team arrives
02:18 at the access point and begins gearing up.
02:22 - I guess we can start with the piece de resistance.
02:26 This is our climbing harness.
02:28 It's a class three harness, and it's called that
02:30 because of the shoulder straps.
02:33 - The shoulder straps prevent climbers
02:34 from slipping out of the harness
02:36 if they accidentally turn upside down,
02:38 and the seat balances their body weight
02:40 so that blood flow to their legs isn't restricted.
02:43 Comfort is also of the utmost importance,
02:45 as climbers can be suspended
02:47 for more than two hours at a time.
02:51 - This device here is our bar rack.
02:53 This is what we use to repel.
02:54 It's a pretty old-school device.
02:57 We have a lot of mud and grit, and when the ropes get wet,
03:01 they swell, so there's not a lot of moving parts.
03:04 It's all friction, so that's our descent device.
03:06 - All right.
03:07 Pretty much all ready to go here.
03:10 No one cares about me.
03:11 Everyone says, "Andy, just take care of yourself."
03:13 (laughs)
03:16 So what they're talking about is some guys have
03:18 a rope handler watching their line,
03:20 and then some of us are on what we call an ASAP,
03:23 which is this.
03:24 This is your backup device.
03:25 And so I'm just fully in control of all of my descent.
03:29 So I can actually step over the edge now.
03:31 - First jump of the day.
03:38 - Am I scared?
03:40 - Yeah.
03:41 - Am I scared?
03:42 I have a healthy respect, that's all.
03:45 The crew's really close.
03:49 We joke around a lot, but when it is time
03:53 to actually go over the edge and do work,
03:56 we kind of call that game time, because it is.
03:58 You need to take it seriously,
03:59 'cause there's a lot of risks involved.
04:01 This program that we're a part of has been going on
04:03 since about the 1930s, and about the whole time
04:07 they've been using pipe poles.
04:09 There's a lot of utility with this.
04:11 This is made out of solid fiberglass here,
04:13 so if it gets into the cliff, this can flex a lot.
04:17 You can use this to position yourself on the wall,
04:19 and then you can use this to gently remove debris.
04:22 You can grab stuff with the hook, gently pull it out.
04:25 It can fit into cracks,
04:27 and then you can get leverage that way.
04:29 - One of the things that makes removing these rocks
04:33 especially challenging is that these cliffs
04:35 undergo something called differential erosion,
04:39 which means that areas of the cliff
04:40 erode at different rates.
04:42 Layers of shale rock located lower on the cliffside
04:45 wear away more quickly than the layer
04:47 of dolomite rock at the top.
04:49 That leaves large, unstable chunks of rock,
04:52 sometimes the size of an SUV, hanging at the cliff's edge.
04:57 The crew uses a controlled swing to gain access
05:00 to material beneath overhangs.
05:02 To do this, they push themselves away from the wall
05:04 with their feet to maintain that controlled movement.
05:07 - These are softball shin pads,
05:13 and they work really, really well for what we do.
05:17 You try not to knee the wall,
05:18 but sometimes for stability purposes,
05:20 you can't really help it.
05:22 We all try to wear a steel toe
05:24 or some sort of composite toe.
05:25 Rocks are hard.
05:26 You can't always dodge a rock when you're moving,
05:29 so having something like that to keep yourself safe
05:32 is 100% necessary.
05:34 So all the rocks that are knocking down
05:38 are essentially coming right to the trail,
05:40 and then some, and they're going right to the Niagara River,
05:42 which we have right here below us.
05:44 - It's 10 a.m.
05:46 The crew is only about 2/3 of the way through their climb
05:49 when the one thing they're worried about happens, a storm.
05:53 - Copy.
05:55 It looks like we might have a wall of rain.
05:57 - Yeah, I'm gonna head back.
05:58 Let's head back.
06:00 - The crew hears thunder and spots lightning
06:02 as they're on the cliffside.
06:03 They need to stop working immediately.
06:05 That will end their progress for today.
06:09 - So today we actually had to cut short.
06:12 We have metal pipe poles in our hand.
06:13 We've got a lot of metal gear on us,
06:14 so we just try to get out of there as quickly as we could.
06:17 Anything that's gonna pose a hazard to the employees,
06:20 then we just stop.
06:22 - The crew had only been working on the 200-foot cliffside
06:25 for less than an hour when the storm began.
06:28 On a typical day, it could take the crew up to three hours
06:31 to clear a whole section.
06:34 When they're able to resume,
06:35 they'll finish removing rocks
06:36 from the lower section of the cliff
06:38 and then stabilize the slope side with wire meshing.
06:41 - This is the primary part of our work here
06:44 that we're gonna try and clear this all out
06:46 so we can essentially have an open hiking trail here again.
06:50 And it's gonna take a good bit of work
06:51 and a good bit of time to get this cleared out
06:53 to be safe for us to open it again.
06:55 - Back at the shop, the crew does paperwork
07:00 and washes their gear.
07:02 - There's actually a lot of paperwork required
07:03 with all this stuff,
07:04 and then also just keeping their gear clean.
07:10 You can kind of see from my shirt,
07:11 I'm filthy from one jump today.
07:13 And if this is how I look, our gear is even worse.
07:18 - So soapy water helps break it and lift the dirt.
07:22 Using a toothbrush, too, to get in there.
07:25 And then using an air compressor
07:26 to spray any of the soap and dirt that's in there.
07:31 And then we have a lubricant, too,
07:32 when it's dry to get in there,
07:34 and it prevents rust and corrosion.
07:38 - After the rope access team has made some progress,
07:41 it's time to start clearing the rocks
07:43 from the walking paths below.
07:45 This is where the gorge crew comes in.
07:47 - We take care of about seven trails in total
07:53 within the gorge itself,
07:55 and then two up top on the top side.
07:57 Now we are in the process of cleaning the trail
08:00 and rebuilding it.
08:01 We've already come down,
08:02 cleared the loose debris off the trail,
08:05 and then started staging to get ready for the bigger jobs.
08:08 - Ah-ha.
08:10 - One of those jobs includes
08:11 a specialized stabilization technique
08:14 to ensure the slope side is secure.
08:16 - So down here to fix these trails,
08:19 we use game of baskets.
08:21 It's a six foot by three foot cube
08:24 that is made of wire meshing.
08:27 And what you do is you dig them down,
08:29 place them within the trail or wherever you need them,
08:32 and then you add rock to the inside
08:34 so that the rock weighs it down.
08:36 A job like this can take a week or two,
08:39 but if we have a good day where we're really rocking
08:43 and getting stuff done,
08:45 it can be maybe a three to four day job.
08:48 - At this mound right here,
08:49 if all hands are on deck,
08:51 I'd like to see hopefully by the end of the summer,
08:53 we get a majority of it taken out,
08:54 and then we have to put in some stabilization techniques
08:57 to help build the trail back up.
08:59 So I could definitely see us working into the fall,
09:01 and if I had to make a guess,
09:02 it'll probably be open next summer.
09:05 - I think if you're gonna do this kind of work,
09:06 at the core, you have to enjoy working outdoors.
09:10 You get to see special things that people don't see,
09:11 plants and animals, like the landscape.
09:14 The work that you do, it's really hard,
09:16 but then you're helping keep the park safe.
09:20 You make a meaningful difference.
09:22 If you're just a park user,
09:23 you might not even realize we were ever there,
09:25 and that's kind of the point.
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