Inexpensive Pallet Road and Parking Area in Muskeg

Built a road through Muskeg

Initially I built a trail road approx.150 yards long through the woods to camping area that we could drive on, which worked well for a few years. Then we had 2 very wet rainy years and the trail became a wet bog, you could not even walk through. I thought about how the Alaska Highway was built with Corduroy ( laying logs down next to each other then covering them with dirt or gravel)

We did not have enough trees to do a Corduroy road so after some thought I decided that we would try used free wooden pallets. There are a lot of local businesses that give away unwanted pallets. So over a period of time we collected approx. 400 pallets. Next issue was where to find inexpensive geotextile fabric or some kind of substitute. The first idea was to collect used carpet from home renovations, so we started collecting used carpets, but found that we required more material than was available...so next thought was to collect the used wrap that you find in Lumber Yards and the yards were happy to get rid of the plastic wrap.

The plan was to first lay down the plastic wrap then put the used pallets on top making a 12 foot wide road and the fill in and cover the pallets with a inexpensive gravel material which turned out to be Pit Run Fines. To move and spread the gravel we purchased a used Front End Loader tractor. (which we sold for $2000.00 more than we purchased it for after the project was finished.)

After the wraps and pallets were laid we used a pitch fork to punch holes and make drainage holes in the plastic wrap and then we applied the gravel with the tractor, filling in and covering the pallets approx. 2 to 3 inches. Probably required around 8 inches of gravel to fill and cover the spaces in the pallets. And it turned out great, we could drive our vehicles on the pallet trail and pallet parking area with no problems over the soggy Muskeg.