Endless steps

Much of our last day on the trail was spent climbing up and down newly made granite steps that went on and on, until we began to wonder if they would ever end.

I've always liked rock work, so these steps really intrigued me because of the workmanship that went into building them. Some of the stones were very large and had to be extremely heavy, and they were all shaped into perfect right angles for the risers. The builders had dry fit everything without the use of mortar.

From this picture, taken from the top of one set of steps, you can see the trail leading up the ridge to the summit of the hill we had just come down, steps all the way.

We couldn't help but wonder how all these steps had been made out here in the middle of nowhere, thinking it must have been done by the military.

We soon found our "military", which turned out to be a crew of a half dozen men armed with a couple of chisels and some rope.

And here's the quarry crew working on the hillside below the stair builders. I still don't know how they managed to get those heavy rocks up to the building site.

It is always a bit of a shock for a person like me from the US, who is so used to everything being done with power tools and earth moving equipment, to even consider a project of this size to be done with nothing but a few hand tools. But here labor is cheap, and people need jobs, so everywhere you look you see laborers like these guys (and women), with primitive tools, taking on large construction projects one step at a time.