North Cascades Highway Snow Removal Update

A message from WSDOT:

Hi all,

Progress on the East side moved the needle to the beginning of Spire Gulch at milepost 164.  Much of the week was spent re-clearing snow on the road from the dozen avalanche chutes on Cutthroat Ridge.  Last weekend’s warm weather brought down 18 snow slides from Cutthroat Creek to Washington Pass. A lot of prep work was accomplished for what’s ahead as the two big caterpillars went to work on the Liberty Bell Mountain chutes where some of the snow over the road is 40 feet deep.

There aren’t a lot of new flickr pics this week.  They’re all from the Avalanche Crew as Don Becker spent the week managing the flooding over SR 153. (They got it restored to two way traffic at 8 o’clock last night!)

The Westside crew continued clearing the winter’s accumulation of rocks and debris from catch basins and ditches and other work to get the first 14 miles to milepost 148 ready for traffic.  That allowed the warm weather to cause the avalanche chutes from there to Washington Pass to empty themselves and also to continue reducing the depth of all the snow on the pavement. (It melted down about 2 inches a day, this week.)

For more details visit the North Cascades Highway webpage, the WSDOT Facebook page, Twitter andFlickr