Monday, March 17
The highway opening effort begins despite three feet of new snow since the avalanche assessment in February.

Today the crew started at the Silver Star Gate at Milepost 170.6 with two Kodiak snow blowers. The snow depth encountered so far is 48 to 58 inches on the flat. In the avalanche zones the depths have been 9 to 20 feet along Cutthroat Ridge.

Twisp crew have been using the D5 dozer along with the Avalanche crew's snow cat (the Piston Bully) this year in removing snow from the slide areas under the avalanche chutes.
Monday morning we found that an avalanche had come down at Ruby Mountain 9 at sometime over the weekend.

Week of March 27
This week the 2 blowers have cleared and widened from MP154 (Swamp Creek) to MP157.5 (Rainy Pass Summit). The going was slower this week because of the deeper snow; there was over two feet of new between Friday when the crew left and Monday when they got back to the machines. It has also snowed everyday since. We will only be working large Kodiak East from this point, as the loader-mounted blower cannot handle the deeper snow as there is from here to the summit of Washington Pass.

We are still under the watchful eyes of the avalanche tech's while working in this area.  The snow is hard and heavy.

April 2 - The blower made it to Bridge Creek trailhead and is widening back up to Rainy Pass.

April 3 - Both sides met today and started the job of widening out the roadway.

April 14 - The roadway is cleared and the pass is opened.