Dear Neighbor,
The brief rain this afternoon dumped 0.17 inches of water on our road. Immediately after the rain stopped, SRRA director Al Webster and I made “skid tests” along the length of the road (jamming on brakes suddenly to see if the surface was slippery) and generally to check out the impact of the water on traction and drivability. This was the first precipitation we’ve had since the new gravel was distributed across the road and compressed down into the surface, a couple of weeks ago.
Basically, the road seemed to hold up well, except for a few slightly slippery spots at the crest of the hill where the surface looked somewhat bare, with minimal surface gravel. Even those spots were drivable, however, and we observed traffic moving normally.
We could easily see tire tread marks where we drove, but we saw the same thing on the new basecourse road on Silver Saddle, which we checked out for comparison. We also repeated the skid tests on the basecourse part of SRR west of the RR tracks and it seemed about the same as the Roadpacker part
We won't really know for certain how the road holds up until we get a sustained rain. I'd say things look promising at this point, but no definite conclusions yet. I think it's desirable for residents to drive on the road when it's wet, because that pushes the gravel down into the surface. Just be careful near areas which have very little gravel.
Regards,
Jim
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