El Dorado County, California Bridges: North South Road Bridges across the Middle Fork of the Cosumnes River (2)

March 2013 (38.56667 Degrees, -120. 44242 Degrees) PiPi Bridges

I was thinking how the PiPi Pedestrian Bridge is similar to the last bridge we studied, the Rocky Bar Road Bridge. They both have timber decks supported by a pony truss main span. I think both bridges may be owned by the U.S. Forest Service.

An interesting detail on today's bridge is that the Warren truss has end members that are bent down from the top chord to join the bottom chord at the supports, which is more of an architectural feature. The approach spans have supports similar to a timber trestle bridge and the main span is supported by stiff concrete pier walls founded on bedrock. The deck is carried by timber beams over these supports.

These bridges are at an elevation of 4500 ft which is high enough to keep the snow from melting. It's odd that the timber deck sits under a blanket of snow all winter. Apparently this type of wood (redwood?) can survive many winters under ice and snow without falling apart.

El Dorado County, California Bridges: North South Road Bridges across the Middle Fork of the Cosumnes River (2) by Mark Yashinsky is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.