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What percentage of your work involves climbing through thick brush or fields?
Posted by JD00 on April 4, 2022 at 7:37 pmWhat percentage of your work involves climbing through thick brush or steep grades? I am curious how much surveying work involves crawling through the rough stuff or on dangerous cliffs.
Larry Best replied 2 years, 6 months ago 16 Members · 16 Replies -
16 Replies
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Some jobs involve a fair amount of that, couldn’t give you a percentage but it’s small and they do tend to be rather memorable. More often during the summer construction season while staking through tall grass or dense brush, you learn to feel ahead with your feet for what is or isn’t under foot. Sometimes there could be a hole between boulders or a stump has rotted out and if you aren’t careful you can mangle a knee easily. One of my old mentors did a real number on his knee falling into an old grave hidden under the forest detritus like a VC pit trap. Coffin rots out and the grave collapses leaving a pit just big enough to swallow a guy.
Willy -
It depends on the area you are working. Western Washington, pretty much daily; Tucson Arizona, probably not so much. But I bet you need to be on look out for Cacti…
I hope everyone has a great day; I know I will! -
This type of work is distributed unevenly among surveyors, depending on market sector. For some surveyors it’s about 0%. For others, who have a steady diet of boundary/cadastral work in rough country, might be painfully close to 100%.
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Waded through the wineberry briars on a 1.5:1 slope today. Have had jobs on the VA-WV line where we cut down trees to lay the briars down to get through…. Mountain boundary surveying, or swamp boundary surveying often involve thick stuff…
All in all, about 10% of my field work has been in the thick. Have also seen some beautifuyl days on the dunes and beach, some on construction sites.
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See Jed’s videos for someone who spends most of their time on serious slopes.
https://youtu.be/zgIrT9AIpQk?t=92
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Slopes, yeah, brush, not much. Percentages? Not sure, but if I’m walking it’s cause it too rough for a 4-wheeler and I take the 4-wheeler places most can’t.
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As little as I can get away with.
What I dislike immensely is some in-town job with a manicured lawn, EXCEPT for the rear corners we must find or set. Darkest Africa couldn’t be worse, with poisonous creatures and plants plus unknown items that have sort of mysteriously been deposited there over time. 800 things that will set off your metal detector. The home to vile ticks, skeeters and other despicable insects in large quantities.
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There’s a section corner up in the north end of OK monumented by a highway department brass cap. It’s been there for years in the manicured Bermuda lawn of a stately ranch house..except it’s buried underneath a huge & sprawling rug juniper. The growth is only about pant’s pocket high, but walking through and over the mess to get to it is impossible…and trying to swing a pin finder effectively is just as difficult.
I’ve often wondered if the juniper wasn’t planted there on purpose as the first reference sheet circa 1955 doesn’t mention it…but all the rest of them do.
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In North Carolina rural boundary surveys had more than their fair share of briars and in the mountains laurel thickets. In Upstate New York it was multi-flora rose. Ouch!!
Alaska isn’t bad in comparison.
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I’m glad I can see the light at the end of my career. In 20 more years the honeysuckle and multiflora rose will take all the pleasure out of field surveying around here.
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Bush honeysuckle is a surveyor’s biggest enemy around here. About 2 hours drive north or south and it eases up but it is thick enough in some places that you literally can not get through some places without a chainsaw. My life’s work is to kill every one of those that I can find. It is no exaggeration to say that I have wiped out 100,000 of those hateful bushes and plenty more to go. Like Divine Bovine, I staked a lot job, nice subdivision and the just the rear is so thick that once I found the corner, I had to figure out how to make enough room to squat down and flag and stake the pins. Also working on a big survey down in the Appalachians and there is plenty of steep and brush to go around. Right now, about 75%, usually about 40% but I am a boundary guy.
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Posted by: @bill93
See Jed’s videos for someone who spends most of their time on serious slopes.
Thanks for the shoutout, Bill???
It might be steep and brushy here but I got married in North Carolina and no way would I want to do what I do through the hills of Swain County. Never seen more bees, hornets, wasps and snakes. I’ll take Devils club, poison oak, bears and cougars all day.
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I don’t have serious topography in my part of NC but I’ll gladly price myself out of certain jobs that involve the briars & dense undergrowth – especially a tract that might’ve been timbered a few years prior & is full of thick volunteer growth from several summers. Another one I’ve learned to avoid is any serious creek bank work – there’s a few larger creeks & smaller rivers here in the sandhills where the banks are 1:1 or 0.5:1 slopes and in no way am I looking to do that kind of work solo.
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My personal work… 0%
Projects I oversee… 0% – 100% based on workload. Here are two project sites that are just starting up. One is 1.6 miles of urban roadway topo in Virginia, the other is 4,000 acres of rural boundary/ALTA in Virginia
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@fairbanksls Biggest difference for me between working in Alaska and the lower 48 is the absence of ticks, poisonous snakes and poison oak. Nearly every bear I’ve ever run across was more pleasant to be around than a lot of people.
Willy -
It’s called “catch ‘n keep” here. It has hooked razor sharp tiny thorns that grab clothes or skin. It’s not everywhere, but there’s a lot of it. An hour of bloody hard work can get you 30 feet some days. Fortunately, I can now turn down the jobs that I think it’s thick. On average in the VI, 50% of surveying work is cutting line. Some jobs it’s 90%.
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