The Children’s Museum of Denver at Marsico Campus added the Adventure Forest as part of an expansion plan to create an outdoor play area. This 500-foot-long aerial course includes climbing, rope swings, bridges, 70-foot slides, a bird’s nest, and a look-out point set at an elevation of 5,280 feet with panoramic views of Denver and the South Platte River.

              The challenges associated with this aerial course started deep below the ground. Adventure Forest sits on over 40 feet of undocumented fill underlain by native clay and eventually bedrock at about 50 feet. The undocumented fill consists of sand, clay and rubble (metal, brick, glass and organics). Constructing shallow foundations on this type of fill material has a high risk of movement and poor performance. Alternatively, installing drilled piers into bedrock would provide much better performance but at a much higher cost. A third foundation option considered was helical piers embedded into the claystone bedrock. Helical piers could provide the performance of a deep foundation system without the expense of using larger drilling equipment.