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How deep did they get? Hope she kept an eye on it, unsupported holes quickly get dangerous, people underestimate how much weight is in the soil if the sides give out and just how dangerous that amount of weight moving can be.

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It was more sprawling than deep. It was a series of trenches connecting "rooms". I know they also had "water features" at some points, but the water would soak into the ground pretty quickly then be a mess for a few days, so they didn't do that.

No collapses happened and everyone is still alive. :-)

Happy that all's well that ends well, but for any parents considering this, trench collapses have killed hundreds of workers in just the past decade. Anything deeper than a couple feet might be a hazard that needs to be mitigated.

Also depends on the local geology and how tenacious the kids are. I couldn't dig to dangerous depths as a kid even if I wanted to because the soil got way too rocky to dig through before 3 feet down.

Why not lean into it instead of becoming a wet blanket? Just look at the trench every few hours or so, and if it gets too deep, tell them about and help them with setting up some shoring.

That's what it means to mitigate the hazard, right?

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