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.
09:26 (gentle music)
09:29 (gentle music)
09:31 (gentle music)
09:34 (gentle music)
09:37 (gentle music)
09:39 (gentle music)
09:42 (gentle music)
09:44 (gentle music)
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