Tower Building in Thomasville
At a remote hike-to or helicopter-access-only site above Thomasville in the Frying Pan Drainage, the contracted team from Elk Mountain Technology razed and completely rebuilt a mountaintop communications tower site.
Although this was a relatively “small” new tower and enclosure, the project was no small task requiring careful planning by CEO Jeff Edelson, expert guidance from Site-Builder Extraordinaire Joel Kogan, tower-climbers and many strong backs. In addition, helicopter long-lining of equipment + transport of personnel from the valley to the site, as well as to other tower sites made for a most-exciting project!
This was all in support of Pitkin County Telecommunications efforts to modernize and upgrade aging mountaintop infrastructure including the tower and enclosure itself, television translators, wireless broadband and public safety communications.
A few highlights from the project
Holy Cross Energy technicians hiked up to install new equipment including a new meter.
Raw materials for the tower base frame sit in the foreground. Many pieces of galvanized steel that would be bolted together atop concrete piers.
Speaking of concrete piers… These were monstrous 4 foot diameter, 6 foot tall forms that were mostly designed to be ballast for wind-loading of the tower structure. All concrete was mixed in the portable orange mixers from pallets of 80 pound bags of Sakrete combined with water from several 275 gallon water totes.
Back-breaking doesn’t even begin to describe those two days of hauling, mixing and pouring concrete.
But how do we get all the materials to the top of the mountain you ask? If it’s small, we may hike it up but for the big stuff, we do sling loads with a helicopter! On our “heavy lift” days we flew a mini-excavator, pallets of concrete, water totes and the steel enclosure and tower up. Other days, we flew smaller equipment sacks and personnel up, and flew trash and other things down.
Check out the video below for a glimpse into helicopter operations.
After getting the Thomasville tower and microwave dish up and running, we flew to another mountaintop site to align and configure the other side of the hop.
Even though skies were smoky and storm clouds were building in the distance, the helicopter couldn’t have looked any better in the field of wildflowers.
Every day was an adventure and the sights did not disappoint. The crew from TransAero were rockstars.
It was a massive team effort all around from Pitkin County Telecommunications to Elk Mountain and beyond.