Weekly updates

May 1
Today is the big day. The pass opens at 8 a.m.

April 29
I just got off the phone with Twisp Maintenance Supervisor Don Becker. The firm and official opening time is 8 a.m. Thursday, May 1. Becker says the east- and westside crews met at about 11 a.m. Monday. Today and tomorrow will be spent widening the cuts guardrail to guardrail and cutting out some pull outs so you all will have a place to pull over and take a picture or two without complicating life for those behind you.

The weather continues to be the determining factor. Becker says they got rained on yesterday, but then it snowed. The forecast calls for more snow today and tomorrow with high temps only in the 30's. On Thursday that changes to no snow and warmer temps. 

Becker set the opening at 8 a.m. which gives the crews a couple hours to "sweep" the entire highway from Silver Star to Diablo and plow or clean up any snow from overnight or any slough from avalanche chutes. "An 8 a.m. Thursday opening provides the safety margin we need so the first drivers over the passes make their trip successfully," said Becker.

Both Dustin and myself are going up to take some pictures and monitor the final day of clearing tomorrow, so there will be "fresh" information on the web page and more photos on flickr.

Jeff Adamson

April 25 - eastside update
There is no truth to the rumors that the North Cascades Highway will reopen this weekend! As of last night, the east and west crews are still about a mile apart between Bridge Creek and Whistler Mountain (that’s about 3 miles east of Rainy Pass).
We’re still on track to be able to reopen next Thursday morning, May 1.

Don Becker, the Twisp Maintenance Supervisor who is directing the reopening effort, says he has sent the rented equipment and contract workers back home. The caterpillar work is done and the roadway below the Liberty Bell Avalanche Zone is cleared, but there’s still more “grooming”, that is, clearing up to the guardrail and cutting pull out areas where we can. Getting the snow blowers through that zone earlier in the week so they could work on the highway from Washington toward Rainy makes the reopening by next Thursday, realistic.

The weather is still the determining factor. It was pretty amenable this week, but it’s going to warm up until Sunday night when there’s more snow and cold forecast through Tuesday. The warm could bring more snow from the avalanche chutes onto the roadway. New snow could come in heavier than expected and fill ‘em up again. On the other hand – colder temps can also stabilize everything and make a Thursday morning opening, MORE likely, so we’ll just have to wait and see.

Monday, the crews will clean up anything that has come down and start clearing that last mile separating the east and west side crews – they’re hoping to meet (a single cut) by Monday afternoon or Tuesday morning.

Jeff Adamson

April 25 - westside update
After a trip to the pass yesterday to check on the progress of the crews for myself, I bring back some good and bad news. The bad news first: Tomorrow is opening day for fishing season, and the pass will not be open in time. The good news: We are less than one week away from opening the pass. We hope to open the pass Thursday, May 1. Make sure you're subscribed to our e-mail updates so you can know right away if that date changes.

Crews have worked all the way to milepost 159.5, which is between Rainy and Washington passes. The snow is about 7 feet deep over the highway beyond that point, and that's after the snowcat came through and shaved some snow off the top. Many of the road signs are just barely visible above the snow. I learned yesterday that the bottom of the signs are set so that they are 7 feet above the ground. That will help you judge the depth of the snow when you cross the pass this year.

I stood against one snow wall along the highway yesterday and it was well above my head. I reached my hand up and the top of the wall was at the end of my fingertips. I'm 6'1". The wall was probably 8 feet tall. Pretty amazing. There's a lot of snow up there.

According to Ted Dempsey, maintenance superintendent for the west side of the pass, this is the most snow he's seen since 1998. He said that it's unusual for our side to have more snow than the east side. He also said that there were far fewer trees and debris in the snow this year than in previous years.

We've mentioned this before, but when the snow is deeper than 6 feet, it's really difficult for the snowblowers to cut through the snow. Dempsey likened it to trying to cut really tall grass with a lawn mower. I thought that was a fantastic analogy. It's tough work cutting long grass with a mower. Long grass clogs and chokes the mower, and it takes forever.

I took some more video and pictures yesterday. There are three new videos to watch. One video shows the snowblower in action, one shows the driver's perspective from inside the snowblower, and one shows how crusty the snow is.

Dustin Terpening

Apirl 23
We posted some video on Youtube of a snowcat pushing snow off the highway to make room for the snowblowers. When the snow is deeper than 7 feet, it's too deep for a snowblower to work in. The snowcat helps cut deep piles of snow down to depths appropriate for a snowblower.

April 22, 2008 - eastside update
Here's an update from the weekend and Monday. We only got 2 inches of new snow, so crews found nothing to hold them up Monday morning. Most of the crew continues to work clearing the 50-foot piles of snow below Liberty Bell Mountain using caterpillars, loaders and excavators instead of snowblowers, due to the rocks that came down the avalanche chutes just east of Washington Pass. However, we were successful in ferrying the snowblowers past Libert Bell 4 so we could start clearing the half mile from there to Washington Pass and beyond.

April 17, 2008 - eastside update
With one more day to go this week, the eastside crew is reporting good news and bad. The good news – they’ve managed to clear the highway, shoulder to shoulder, all the way to Liberty Bell #2 (milepost 165). Twisp Maintenance Supervisor Don Becker says he expects they’ll get through Libert Bell 2 tomorrow. The Caterpillars, loaders and excavators are doing the cleanup all the way to the pavement due to the amount of debris – mostly rocks – below the avalanche chutes. Becker says they’re going to try to cut a path through the Liberty Bell zone that the snowblowers can drive through, so they can get started on the other side of Liberty Bell 4, clearing the highway for the two miles to the Washington Pass summit.

On Monday the crew was glad they’d moved all their equipment back below the Cutthroat Ridge avalanche chutes. All the chutes above Cutthroat Ridge 5 dumped snow on the road and it was too deep to drive through. “We spent half of Monday just getting back to where we were last Thursday,” Becker said. 

While nothing got broken and no one was hurt, “we got a thrill, and thankfully that’s all we got,” said Becker. “We were moving an excavator up to Spiral Gulch and Liberty Bell when a snowslide broke loose, covering the excavator and the highway with a pile of snow 10 feet deep and 70 feet wide. It’s a reminder of just how dangerous and unpredictable it can be up there,” he said. The temperature was between 46 and 50 degrees and avalanche control tech Mike Stanford says that’s what probably triggered the slide.

While the eastside crew has enjoyed sunshine and warm temperatures, the westside crew has been working under overcast, snowy, rainy and windy conditions. The forecast for the weekend is calling for as much as 1 foot of new snow. “We could be right where we were last Monday, next Monday,” Becker said. “We could be cleaning up slides again from Silver Star all the way to Liberty Bell.”

There are about a dozen new pictures that Don and Mike have sent of the work this week that are posted on the WSDOT flickr site – check them out!

April 17, 2008 - westside update 
Progress slowed to a crawl this week due to equipment problems, snow depth, illness and training classes.

We sent the rental cat back on Monday because the Piston Bully from the east side was able to cross the pass and help us. 

Our competent operator Mike Reitz stopped his snowblower and found a gear box issue. If the gear box had gone out, we would have had to send the blower to Seattle for major repairs. He saved us time and money. Mechanic Tim McCartney should have it back together and ready to work on Monday or Tuesday next week.

The snowblower and Piston Bully are working their way east from Rainy Pass in 8 feet of snow. They should finish the week near milepost 158. The ice walls below milepost 148 have started to melt and fall away from the rock faces, which is always a sign that the weather is turning our way.

April 11, 2008 
The crew from the west side advanced to milepost 157 this week, which is just .6 miles from Rainy Pass.

The mechanic on site was very busy this week. Crews encountered a 6-inch layer of ice which stressed some of the equipment to the point of stretching ribbon bolts and breaking shear bolts. Crews had the two large Kodiak blowers performing great otherwise.

The snow is a little more than 6 feet deep. We needed a cat to continue progress Wednesday, which was delivered in the afternoon at milepost 155.8. Thursday afternoon at quitting time, crews had pioneered a cut to milepost 157. The highway from milepost 156 west has been widened past the fog line. That is very good progress considering we had to push the snow with the cat to the blower. Our records show that we can proceed about a half-mile a day when using the cat to push snow to the blowers.

Eastside crews have made good progress too, creating a path almost shoulder to shoulder to milepost 164, which is just below Spiral Gulch and the Liberty Bell Mountain avalanche zone. There is a lot of debris in the chutes, which means the avalanche zones are being cleared using front-end loaders and excavators instead of the Kodiak snowblowers.

"The blowers ignore the guardrail and shoot the snow over the edge, but you can't do that with excavators and loaders. Finding places to put the snow, not to mention the boulders and trees, is a challenge," Twisp Maintenance Supervisor Don Becker said.

The eastside D-8 and D-6 caterpillars are working ahead of the road-clearing equipment, cutting those huge drifts below Liberty Bell 1 and 2 from 50 feet or more down to about 6 feet so the snowblowers can finish the clearing down to the pavement.

Here's what's up there right now, east and west: four Kodiak snowblowers, three Caterpillars (one D-8, two D-6), two snowcats, an excavator, front-end loaders and graders.

Weather has been clear or overcast, but temperatures remained about 40 degrees, which kept the avalanche chutes, that still have the 10 inches of snow from one week ago, stable. We are hoping the warm forecast for the next several days will either melt it in place or cause the snow to slide by Monday.

"We're bringing all our equipment to a site below Cutthroat Ridge so nothing we'll need Monday morning will be stranded on the wrong side of a big slide," Becker said. 

April 4, 2008 - eastside update
By the end of the work week (Thursday afternoon) on the east side, the seven-man crew from Twisp had cleared SR 20 from shoulder to shoulder to CR 2 - that's the second avalanche chute in the Cutthroat Ridge zone at milepost 167. It had taken all day to cut through the 15 to 20 feet of snow on the road, below CR 1 at milepost 166.

The day wasn't without it's challenges. One of the snowblowers broke a reel (the spinning part on the front that throws the snow) and it was out of service until afternoon. Then, just an hour before their week would end, a second blower burned out a starter motor. Maintenance Supervisor Don Becker says the mechanics will have both ready for work Monday morning.

Besides the blowers, loaders, graders and excavators they've been using, Monday will also bring some "paid help". Lloyd Logging crews will assist in the effort to cut the piles of snow in the avalanche zones down to "snowblower-sized bites" (which means cutting the snowpack down to about 7 feet deep above the pavement.) A big Bombardier snowcat with a blade (usually stationed at the Loup Loup ski bowl), rented D-6 Cat and Lloyd's huge D-8 will be welcome additions to the party! Becker says there hasn't been any significant new snow all week and crews made good progress Wednesday and Thursday, despite the equipment breakdowns.

Last weekend's 10 inches of new snow is making the avalanche crew a little nervous. That snow refilled the avalanche starting zones and as temperatures warmed on Thursday afternoon, some slide activity was noted. "Too warm, too fast is our biggest concern," said Becker, "If those chutes are full and unstable, we can't risk people's lives and I'll pull them off the job, if it's not safe to work there."

April 4, 2008 - westside update
Crews working on the west side of the pass are making good progress despite some equipment problems. The loader-mounted snowblower was out of commission for a few days. Crews have cut one snowblower-wide lane through the snow to the Swamp Creek trail head near milepost 154. A second full size snowblower was delivered Thursday, which should help with snow removal work. Crews will spend the next couple days clearing and cleaning the highway between mileposts 149 and 154.

Beyond the Swamp Creek trail head, the snow is taller than our snowblowers. We’re hoping that warmer temperatures over the weekend will help the snow settle down. As the snow depth exceeds 5.5 feet it slows the snowblowers down. The operators have to stop and go into reverse in order to let the snow that is above the blower fall down, and then move forward again. As the process continues every so often, the operators have to stop and shovel the snow off of the top of the blower so they can see. It can slow progress to a crawl.

Next week, if the snow doesn’t settle down significantly, we may have to use a bulldozer to push to the snowblowers through the snow. Supervisors from east and west are reviewing our options to address the issue.

Crews worked five eight-hour shifts this week. Next week they will start four 10-hour shifts.

April 2, 2008
As of this morning, from the east side, the roadway is cleared -shoulder to shoulder- to Lone Fir at milepost 169. The crews have a double-snowblower cut another two miles above there.

Today, they're bringing in an excavator and our "Piston Bully" snowcat with its plow blade so they'll be able to start working on the 15- to 20-foot high accumulations over the roadway at the first of the Cutthroat Ridge avalanche chutes (CR 1) on Thursday morning. The crew continues working toward CR 1 with a loader, a grader, two Kodiak snowblowers, (both from Stevens Pass) and a smaller loader-mounted blower.

Monday didn't produce much progress. The crew spent the day cleaning up the 10 inches of snow that fell over the weekend from the miles of pavement they'd already cleared last week.

Twisp Maintenance Supervisor Don Becker says the progress on Tuesday (like last week) was pretty steady. "Debris in the snow has been less than the last couple years. We only had one downed tree to deal with and that was last week, on the first day, down near Early Winters."

March 28, 2008
Mmmm. Doughnuts. (See the picture on the right.) Mike Stanford has a nose for snow donuts. Mike is one of our avalanche control technicians. Two years in a row he has found snow donuts along the snow covered North Cascades Highway during the spring opening work.  

This year's donuts don't have the same consistency or luster as last year's donuts. Pictures of last years donuts.

In case you missed it, Mike Stanford and his snow donuts made national news last year. Pictures of the donuts were seen in papers as far away as England. They were all the rage.

March 27, 2008
WSDOT maintenance crews started on Monday the annual spring ritual of reopening the North Cascades Highway.

Twisp Supervisor Don Becker, who oversees the effort, says the first week was a mix of good news and bad. 

Crews made good progress from the east, clearing more than eight miles of highway from Early Winters Information Center to beyond the Silver Star Gate. The highway will be open to traffic this weekend as far as the gate. Limited parking will be available there.

“The bad news was blowing a driveline in one of the Kodiak snowblowers. It’s done for the season and going back to Spokane for major repairs. A loader-mounted blower from Davenport will replace it, temporarily. Next week, a second blower from Stevens Pass will be brought in,” Becker said. 

The caterpillar tractors will join the loaders, graders and snowblowers next week as the eastside crew moves into the Cutthroat Ridge avalanche zone.

“The snow gets deeper as we proceed. At Early Winters, it was only 18 inches deep, but it was very hard having been compacted by the snowmobile traffic. Above Silver Star Creek, we’re in snow about 4-1/2 feet deep,” Becker said. 

Weather has been clear and cold. Wednesday brought 1 inch of new snow that fell in the space of about 45 minutes.

The crew of seven is working four, 10-hour shifts, Monday through Thursday.

“It’s more efficient this way. Figuring the travel time to the work site, we get about an extra half-day of work done, every week," Becker said. 

Westside crews have been successful clearing snow that’s 4 feet deep in the vicinity of Swamp Creek, almost 18 miles above the west avalanche closure gate near Diablo.

March 12, 2008
On Wednesday, March 12, WSDOT Avalanche Control and Maintenance officials traveled 20 miles from the east closure point at Early Winters, west of Mazama, to Rainy Pass on snowmobiles and a snowcat to assess the conditions and determine when the annual spring reopening effort could start. The work is scheduled to begin Monday, March 24, and should be finished by May 1, barring illness, weather delays or equipment breakdowns.

On Wednesday, officials found overcast skies, 30-degree temperatures and no precipitation, though 4 to 6 inches of new snow had fallen the day before. More snow is expected next week.

Avalanche Control Technician Mike Stanford said that while there was a large amount of snow, “the avalanches were smaller than last year, and the slides didn’t appear to have the volume of rocks and trees encountered the last couple years. The snow pack is relatively stable, with two distinct layers from December and February. Slides could affect the reopening work, depending on whether we get cool and clear or warm and wet weather this spring.”

The snow depths over the pavement ranged from 4 feet to more than 9 feet from Early Winters to Washington and Rainy Passes. Below the avalanche chutes in the Cutthroat Ridge zone, snow slides were as deep as 20 feet. Through the Liberty Bell Mountain zone, the slides were 40 to 50 feet deep over the roadway. Contrary to the norm, there was more snow at Rainy Pass and to the west than at Washington Pass and to the east. Heavy snows caused avalanches that twice forced the west closure point to be moved to Newhalem, 13 miles west of the usual Diablo closure point.