Crushing It
Rock, meet sledgehammer
Next Saturday is National Public Lands Day and the customary celebration is to volunteer at your local park, forest, or trail. I hope today’s post inspires you to explore the volunteer trailwork opportunities near you. I promise it’s not all the Sisyphean task of eradicating buckthorn—sometimes you get to crush rocks!
I smashed a rock with a sledgehammer for the first time this past June. Not something I expected I would do in my mid-thirties. Or ever, honestly.
Breaking rocks was part of a three-day stonework training I took with other volunteers from the Ice Age National Scenic Trail. Our instructor—who has built stone structures on trails around the world—taught us how to split stone with a hammer drill and a set of feathers and wedges, how to shape stone with a chisel, and how to make crush with a sledgehammer.
As a noun, crush refers to small pieces of rock—golf ball sized and smaller—that help to stabilize and level the big stones that make up staircases and retaining walls. If you’re building a stone structure in your backyard, you can go to the garden center for bags of gravel in whatever size you need. On a trail, that can be a logistical hassle so an easier option is to crush locally sourced stone1 on site.
You may think that big tools and bigger muscles are necessary to make crush, but a two pound mini sledgehammer and mediocre biceps are often sufficient. The ten pound sledgehammer is really only brought out to crack a big rock into more manageable pieces or as a last ditch effort to answer the question, “Will this crush?”
Sandstone disintegrates pretty easily, so you feel like the Incredible Hulk. Rotten granite will sometimes fall apart in your bare hands, but when it’s only overripe, it requires a bit more convincing. You need to know when to set a rock aside and move onto the next one—you just aren’t going to win against a hunk of quartz or basalt!2 Luckily, the glaciers moved a lot of rocks around Wisconsin, so there’s a decent variety to choose from along the Ice Age Trail.
Throughout the three days of training, people kept commenting about how happy I looked, surrounded by rocks with a two pound mini sledge in my hand. Every muscle in my arms screamed and two pairs of gloves developed holes in the fingertips, but I kept on smiling.
I find crushing rocks to be meditative. I exist in my own little bubble—if someone ventures too close, they might get hit with an airborne shard of rock, so most keep their distance. It’s easy to fall into a rhythm—the impact of metal on rock is a metronome that I both hear and feel. There are surprising revelations—sometimes a dull rock shatters into something beautiful and sometimes an answer to a long-stewed-after question pops forth while my mind wanders.
But even when I am working independently in a crush pile, I’m still part of the stone crew. The smiles and thank yous every time I drop off a full bucket of crush are validating, especially since I spend much of my regular work life alone at the desk in my dining room. (Okay, realistically I’m usually working from the couch.) Community and tangible results—that’s a pretty solid combination, and the reason I keep returning for more volunteer trailwork.
Whether I start the day in good spirits or need a bit of help getting there, the crush pile is a joyful place for me. Take my frustrations out on a rock. Get thanked by the rest of the crew for doing so. Rinse and repeat until I’m smiling so wide that I worry about stray pieces of crush chipping a tooth!
11 Tips For Running An Effective Crush Pile (In The Order I Wrote Them Down):
Use a hard surface or another rock as your base, so that the energy of your swing doesn’t just disperse into the soft ground.
Choose a protected area—ideally tall rocks on several sides—so that the spray of crush is contained and easier to collect. If the landscape doesn’t make this possible, lay down a tarp to prevent your spray from getting lost in the nearby grass and dirt.
Bring knee pads or a foam pad to make it more comfortable to kneel.
Don’t hit rocks on an edge or point. Arrange the rock so a flat side is on top and then bring the sledge straight down for easier splitting.
Choose a shaded spot for your crush pile!3
Sweep your rock dust off to the side to save in a separate bucket for finish work and filling in cracks, rather than mixing it in with the larger pieces of crush.
Crush can be up to the size of golf balls. We’re not aiming for gravel and it doesn’t all need to be perfectly uniform in size.
Only keep the rock you are currently splitting in your active work area. If there are multiple big rocks in a small area, it’s more likely you will pin a finger between them when something inevitably shifts.4
Use the mini sledge with two hands. It’s light enough to swing one-handed, but you can crush much longer if you use both.
Be careful not to put stress on your wrists and elbows. Use your arm and shoulder strength for your swings—your wrists shouldn’t bend.
For extended crushing with the mini sledge, place a foam roller behind your knees for good, upright posture from a kneeling position without burning out your quads.
By locally sourced, I mean that we wander around our work area poking, prodding, and uncovering rocks until we find ones that work for our current need, whether that is rotten granite for crush or flat slabs for steps or jagged gargoyles to keep hikers from straying off trail. We call it rock shopping, but the only payment we offer is in the form of sweat and heaving grunts. Occasionally, we can’t come up with the necessary funds to convince a rock out of its resting place, so we are forced to look for more budget-friendly options. And like tales of fish that got away, we trade stories about the big rocks over beers at the campfire. Remind me to tell you about the absolute beauty that could have been a perfect step, still in a hole just a few feet from away a ski trail along the Rib Lake segment…
Or at least, I’m not.
My crush pile had started the day in the shade, but the sun moved and I got very badly sunburned.
I wrote this one down as my finger was still smarting from being pinched.