One year later, most road damage repaired
It was a year ago when Glacier National Park officials were just coming to realize just how badly a torrential rainstorm had damaged the historic Going-to-the-Sun Road.
One ranger declared: "We have lost the road."
More than $5 million and a year later, flood-related repairs to the road are nearly complete and a long-planned reconstruction project on the road is still under way, mainly because of unseasonably favorable weather for road work going into mid-November.
"As long as the weather is cooperative, we will go as long as we can," said John Schnaderbeck, Sun Road project engineer with Federal Highway Administration.
The weather turned sour in a hurry last year. Between Nov. 2 and Nov. 7, 11 inches of rain was measured at an automated weather station on Glacier's Flattop Mountain, with 8.5 inches coming down Nov. 7 alone.
The downpour pushed streams above their banks, overwhelmed some culverts on Sun Road and caused Swiftcurrent Lake to rise well above its normal level, flooding the bottom floor of Many Glacier Hotel.
The worst washout on Sun Road took out both lanes, leaving a chasm more than 100 feet wide. But there were multiple washouts in the same area just below the East Tunnel, and other sections of road west of Logan Pass also were badly damaged.
Locating and surveying the damage also proved to be difficult. Within a week of the "Pineapple Express" downpour, three feet of snow had fallen at higher elevations in the park, delaying repairs on the upper portions of the road until the following spring.
Those repairs started in April, following in the tracks of plows that cleared snow from the road. The repair work involved installation of a portable bridge across the big gap below the East Tunnel, the construction of huge retaining walls and installation of larger culverts.
Meanwhile, heavy reconstruction work got under way between the West Tunnel and Haystack Creek west of Logan Pass.
Sun Road was opened to traffic over the pass July 1.
Schnaderbeck said that repair work recently ceased, with most of the work finished.
"We have two small retaining walls that we're going to build in the spring," he said, and grading and paving of the repaired road near the East Tunnel also will be done in the spring.
The long-term reconstruction work, referred to as the "Phase Six" segment, continues with a crew of about 15 people working from sunrise to sunset, five days a week.
"We have quite a bit of masonry work and we're trying to get as much done before the snow flies," Schnaderbeck said.
Last month, work was temporarily delayed by a storm that dumped about three feet of snow on the road. But plows went to work, the weather turned mild and the snow melted, allowing work to resume.
Schnaderbeck estimates that the $12 million Phase 6 work between the West Tunnel and Crystal Point is currently about 70 percent complete, and it will be entirely finished with paving work next spring before the road is opened to through traffic.
Over the summer, one lane was kept open through the construction zone. But on Sept. 16, both lanes were closed to allow for accelerated work to proceed.
"We were really able to accelerate the amount of work that we needed to do," Schnaderbeck said. "To finish basically 70 percent of that work, I think, was a great accomplishment."
The Federal Highway Administration is planning for additional segments of work to be done next summer beyond Crystal Point to Haystack Creek. That work and the entirety of Phase Six are expected to be finished by the end of the next work season, Schnaderbeck said.
Reporter Jim Mann may be reached at 758-4407 or by e-mail at jmann@dailyinterlake.com