Observatory construction stopped for a few months while the winter of 2025/26 ran its course. As soon as the snow melted, we got back to work. The first order of business was levelling the fill clay in the interior, which had settled with the freezing and spring thawing. We rented a packer and got to work.
Knowing that it would settle over the winter, we had filled it with more clay than we needed for our base, so we had to remove some of it (little did we know that it still had a lot more settling to do). When we were done, we had a reasonably level surface to start from:
We then put down geotextile fabric and then added several inches of crushed gravel to the clay.
I found using a sheet of plywood positioned at an angle let us use the skid steer (this time, rented from TPH Rentals in Westlock) to dump gravel further into the base than we would otherwise have been able to do.
When we were all done, we had a decent base to work with:
And while we had the skid steer, we also levelled out the topsoil surrounding the site a bit again.
