Hi all. I need some outside the square ideas for an access road into my rural property. It has a easement to gain access and the easement crosses ground that is absolutely treacherous in any amount of rain. Like, seriously, seriously dangerous slippery stuff. The easement is about 800 mt long and varies from flat ground to ridge top with only one short rise of about 9 mt in elevation. Because the easement goes through a cattle farm the cows do their best to destroy everything when it rains. 200 cows walking in a line 300 mm wide soon carves a massive trench. So,I've taken to filling the cow trenches with roadbase and luckily some of them line up to make a good pair of wheel tracks. However, we got nearly 400 mm of rain last week and the road base is completely gone. The current track is impassable with just a shower of rain so a long term solution is needed pronto - so I can get in there and build my off grid cabin. Things I've thought of / considered are

1. traditional road base type of road - will mean machinery and lots of expense and no guarantee it will survive a deluge let alone the cows
2. paving two wheel tracks all the way using either - rocks from the creek (plenty) or DIY concrete pavers cast in a mould at home and transported to site
3. pave two wheel tracks with besser blocks and fill them with gravel
4. weld up steel frames to form 2 wheel tracks and fill with gravel
5. lay some sort of matting down
6. horizontal gabions

Things to rule out based on cost

1 bitumen - too expensive
2 full concrete
3 proper graded gravel road

Bearing in mind that it is not my land and whilst having an awesome road would be great, improving someone elses land value is not my bag
The property has no power or water and machinery would be limited to about 3 tonne. Another fella uses the easement too so there is a possibility of splitting the costs. He is not strictly obliged to contribute though. Any and all oddball, left field suggestions are most welcome.

Cheers.


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