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Friday Slide Show: Hill Update
3 September 2021
When we published Road Work in July, the serious work to stabilize the hill was just beginning on the western side of Glen Canyon. By the end of August, when we took these, it was well under way.
But what, exactly, were they doing on the hill? How, that is, were they stabilizing the crumbling chert?
We don't really know. But that didn't stop us from examining the site and reaching a few provisional conclusions that have been reinforced since.
They are covering the hill in a wire mesh that is being anchored in place by long spikes called rock anchors driven deep into the hill. Presumably, they will plant some sort of succulent on the net to hold the hill together.
But they seem to realize that some level of erosion is inevitable. And toward the end of the slide show, you can see the solution to that. There are posts to support a wall along the roadway to catch any falling rocks.
Will it work?
We'll have to see. It does bring to mind the cliffs above Seal Rock on the western edge of the city. Those cliffs, above a similarly winding roadway were covered in a false front behind which gunners were hidden to protect the bay against invasion during World War II.
The fake cliffs have held up well.
The trouble along O'Shaughnessy became critical in Oct. 2017 when a rock slide closed the roadway. After dealing with the emergency and removing some loose rock from the hill, Public Works planned this work to start the next spring.
Some work was done then to remove a large boulder that was threatening to roll down the hill in the first rainstorm but it wasn't until this summer that the city could roll up its sleeves and deal with the ongoing issue.
A similar solution was applied to Telegraph Hill a few years ago when it suffered from a couple of rock slides. And it is still standing.
We are too, after walking down the hill and back up, an 11,700 step excursion by the time we had wandered through Glen Park itself.
