The General Manager of Yellowhead Road and Bridge (Nicola) says the 35-hour closure of Hope to Merritt section of the Coquihalla Friday into Saturday was the right decision.

Dave Duncan says its in part due to the amount of snow that fell on that stretch of highway.

“We had a forecast for Thursday night into Friday morning of about 10 to 15 centimetres, and we ended up getting about 70 centimetres falling,” he said on NL Newsday. “So you know a good quadrupling or more of the forecast.”

Duncan says that significant amount of snow caused some of the avalanches that were triggered by heli-bombers on Saturday morning to reach the Coquihalla.

“I’d say half of the closure was because of that sort of risk,” Duncan said. “Its not often that an avalanche that is triggered actually gets all the way down to the Coquihalla. The snow that came down from the avalanches that were triggered got all the way to the highway. It was quite something to see.”

“It definitely dusted the highway and actually took some trees down in close proximity. So in hindsight, it was really good that the techs chose to make that closure happen and get those packs taken care of so that it didn’t affect anyone at a different time which would be a big challenge.”

Yellowhead Road and Bridge (Nicola) maintains the Coquihalla from Lac Le Jeune near Kamloops to the Portia bridge.

And Duncan says it has been a challenging past couple of weeks for maintenance crews owing to the roughly two metres – or 200 centimetres – of snow that has fallen on the Coquihalla over that time-period.

More to come