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Feature-Paved with good intentions

The road from Horseshoe Bay to Squamish has always been a battle with nature

It’s Friday, Aug. 30, 2002, and the leaves on the maple trees are already changing colour on one side of the Squamish Highway at a viewpoint a mile north of Horseshoe Bay. Shear rock faces, cleaned of rock debris and loose gravel, overhang the other side of the highway.

It was near this spot 45 years ago, at a ribbon cutting ceremony opening the Squamish Seaview Highway, that Premier W.A.C. Bennett, cabinet minister Phil Gaglardi and reeves and mayors from the area predicted great things would result from the new route. Lillooet MLA, Don Robinson forecast that the road would become a vibrant link to B.C.’s Interior. The government promised that the highway would mean development of Garibaldi Park.

"The highway will be a first link in a central route to Alaska!" the irrepressible Gaglardi said from a raised platform at the view-point before a 500-car cavalcade set off on the 27-mile drive to Squamish.

Right from the start officials expected traffic on the road to be heavy, and right from the start the highway was controversial. Drivers in the opening cavalcade were urged to keep their eyes strictly on the road and to view scenery only at designated viewing points.

A short distance from Horseshoe Bay reporters from Vancouver’s two daily newspapers got out of their cars to remove rocks the size of footballs from the highway. And on the drive back from Squamish reporters stopped their cars and listened as small pebbles and rocks bounced down an embankment.

The opening of the highway followed years of debate about whether a route should be built through the Capilano watershed, following an old cattle trail from Britannia to North Vancouver, or whether the route should follow Howe Sound’s east coast.

Where the road should go became a major issue in B.C. politics in the ’50s. Residents of Squamish and Britannia were angry because they couldn’t use the already established Capilano route. When a Vancouver newspaper reported on Sept. 6, 1951 that construction would begin on a Vancouver to Squamish road in 1952, probably up the Capilano River and through the watershed, many predicted that objections to the route would be overcome.

But there was strong opposition to a road through the Capilano. Reeve Howard Fletcher of West Vancouver called the Capilano proposal a "downright crime."

"When will people realize that construction of a road in the Capilano will lead to full scale chlorinization?" Fletcher asked.

Thought provoking newspaper articles opposing the Capilano route noted the potential for tourism in the Sea to Sky corridor as early as 1952. Fletcher promoted the idea of building a scenic road along Howe Sound. And when advocates of the Capilano route argued that a road up Howe Sound was too expensive the Vancouver Water Board responded that even at the estimated $10 million it would cost to build the road along Howe Sound – compared to just over $1 million it would cost to build the road through Capilano – Howe Sound offered greater scenic values. The Howe Sound route was cheap when the stakes were the safety of the Lower Mainland’s water supply.

"Let them take the Howe Sound route where there’s $10 million worth of scenery for tourists," members of the water board said.

The government leaned towards Howe Sound. Then on March 15, 1953, Premier Byron Johnson postponed the proposal to build the highway on recommendations of the Legislative Railway Committee, which expressed misgivings about whether constructing the Pacific Great Eastern Railway and a highway along Howe Sound would be possible.

Proponents of the railway said rail should have priority and pointed to engineering evidence that suggested constructing the road and the railway was economically impossible.

The debate about where the highway should go was coming at a time when the railway figured hugely in people’s minds. The 1950s weren’t that far removed from the "Age of Rail" and there was a lot of pride in that heritage. A highway up Howe Sound was perceived by some as a threat. J.A. Kennedy, a general manager with the PGE went so far as to suggest that people living in West Vancouver might as well move out if the Squamish Highway was built.

"If trucks carry PGE freight it’ll mean one heavy truck every 10 minutes, 24 hours a day," Kennedy warned.

The provincial government’s idea was that the Capilano road would have fencing and patrols to protect the water. Supporters said a road through the Capilano would be easy to maintain in spite of as much as 310 inches of snow that fell in 1951.

And there were people who didn’t buy the pure water idea at all.

"Practically every other city in North America has humans in watersheds," one advocate said. "Why not Vancouver?"

Then in a series of articles in the Vancouver Sun in March, 1953, reporter, Paul St. Pierre, wrote that the big issue was pure water. The powerful Vancouver Water Board, representing 13 Lower Mainland communities, was unilaterally opposed to a public road through the Capilano watershed.

Pure water and scenery won out.

The Howe Sound route was chosen and construction of the Squamish Seaview Highway began in February, 1955. A two-lane highway would be built from Horseshoe Bay to Squamish to accommodate traffic at 25 to 35 miles per hour.

Workers claimed the Squamish Highway was the toughest road ever built in B.C. In his 10 years as a government highway engineer, George McCabe, who oversaw much of the construction, had seen his share of problems building roads, but nothing like those encountered during work on the Squamish Highway.

"Sometimes it’s tough even finding a place to set the road," McCabe reported in a Vancouver newspaper story on April 6, 1957.

McCabe cautioned that the road was not being built for high speeds.

"It would be almost impossible to make it four lanes," he said. "The cost of cutting the rock back would be unbelievable!"

But, McCabe predicted that when the route was finished it would be the most scenic highway in B.C.

When the 27 1/2 mile Squamish Seaview Highway opened on Aug. 7, 1957 the bill for building the road came in at $11,406,800.

"You could probably put that at 10 to 20 times more depending on what’s got to be done," Dave Buckley, a road foreman who has been in charge of maintenance on the Squamish Highway since 1970, says of current proposals to widen the highway.

With reinforced earth walls, such as have been constructed at Lions Bay and Neuman Creek, where a concrete slab has been placed vertically, tied into the mountainside for stability and then back-filled with material, the costs could be astronomical.

"When they talk about these walls some of them are going to have to be pretty damn high!" exclaims Buckley.

Upgrading a section of the highway from Horseshoe Bay to Lions Bay would involve removing 1.6 million cubic metres of rock, installing eight bridges and constructing 32 walls. The section from Lions Bay to Porteau would involve removing 1.2 million cubic metres of rock, building seven bridges and 26 walls.

"Other highway segments pale in comparison," one spokesperson for the Ministry of Highways said.

If the project to widen the highway to four lanes were a normal highway reconstruction, where a railway and the ocean were not located directly below, work could probably be done more economically. But because of environmental concerns and the railway, work on the highway would have to be done on a much smaller scale so that material is not broadcast all over the site.

"They’ve got to control it more, which becomes more expensive," Buckley says.

Buckley’s maintenance budget for the Squamish Highway from Horseshoe Bay to Squamish in the ’70s was about $858,000 a year. The cost of debris flow structures and upgrading the highway to multiple lanes through Lions Bay in the ’80s was approximately $15 million. The B.C. government has spent $100 million over the past 10 years maintaining the highway.

Debris torrents have been notorious hazards on the Squamish Highway. A debris torrent happens when a snow avalanche or logs and roots, left in most cases by logging, washes into a creek bed. The water rises behind the debris, building up pressure behind the logs. The pressure of the water eventually overwhelms the log jam and the whole thing gives way, coming down the creek and causing massive damage to property.

"When that lets go it removes the overburden and material from the banks of the creek and continues to build up as it comes down," Buckley explains.

On the night of Feb. 28, 1981, the wooden trestle bridge across M Creek near Lions Bay was washed out. Nine people died when they drove their vehicles into the pitch black hole where the bridge used to be.

On Dec. 4, 1981, a debris torrent in Strachan Creek killed a pregnant woman.

Buckley was patrolling the highway on Feb. 11, 1983, the night Alberta Creek came down.

"I had been travelling the highway south and it was raining profusely," Buckley recounts.

The slopes of the Howe Sound mountains were saturated with rain. A Pineapple Express, an intense, moist weather system originating near Hawaii, had slammed into the mountains. Most frequent in winter, these systems dump tremendous amounts of rain when they butt up against the Howe Sound mountains.

As much as six inches of rain was falling each hour at Lions Bay when Buckley got a call on his radio phone about a huge noise in the area.

"I came through from Lions Bay to Horseshoe Bay and the roads were fine. The creeks were all clear," Buckley continues.

"I turned around (after he got the call) and by the time I got to Turpin Creek, eight kilometres north of Horseshoe Bay, the highway was flooded."

There had been a debris torrent in Turpin Creek and water, gravel and wood debris were scattered across Highway 99 and up against a guard rail. Buckley went into action. He pulled up to the front of the debris and called the regional radio room, advising them the road was flooded and impassable. Barricades were set up north and south of the debris torrent. Then the gate on the highway north of Britannia was put down, closing the highway.

"We were on the highway dealing with one of the torrents when the torrent came down Alberta Creek," Buckley says.

The highway was closed at Horseshoe Bay and a loader was dispatched to clear the road at Turpin Creek, so emergency vehicles could get up to Lions Bay. When Buckley got to Lions Bay, he was shocked by what he saw coming down Alberta Creek.

"That material had the consistency of wet concrete," he says. "It was brown in colour and smelled distinctly of earth, with rocks the size of Volkswagens bouncing out of it and logs 40 and 50 feet tall going end over end."

Buckley has never forgotten the sound.

"It was the sound of jets throwing on the after-burners," he says.

A log 60 feet long went through the front door of a Lions Bay house, then continued down the hall and out the back door. The house was 40 or 50 feet from the creek channel.

The Alberta Creek torrent killed two boys in Lions Bay and destroyed several homes.

Just north of Lions Bay, Magnesia Creek drops out of a forest of alder, fir and cedar trees. Above the creek an old fir snag juts haphazardly from a rock bluff. Mount Harvey, cloud shrouded and remote, looms up in the distance.

The terrain behind Mount Harvey is as rugged as any in the Howe Sound region. Shear cliffs drop off the north-west side of the mountain below Magnesia Meadows.

Buckley is concerned about Magnesia Meadows. The area was high graded by loggers decades ago. All the timber was cut but only logs three feet in diameter and better were taken. A lot of debris and old logs were left criss-crossing a creek channel. The chute that comes out of there is the headwaters for Alberta Creek. It’s a 30 to 35 degree slope and if an avalanche comes off the rock face above Magnesia Meadows it will pick up this good sized wood material and bring it down the channel.

"If the right conditions occurred at the same time, that has all the ear-marks of a problem," Buckley says.

"There are no more rock slides on the Squamish Highway than any other highway in B.C.," John Schindel, a rock scaler on the Squamish Highway says. "There’s just a lot more traffic volume."

Schindel, project manager for the Ministry of Highway’s rock scaling crews, worked almost exclusively on the Squamish Highway between 1981 and 1984 and knows the effects of heavy rainfall.

"Rock faces need remedial work because of the climate changes; freezing, frost and frost-jacking on the rocks," Schindel explains.

The ground water in rock bluffs is responsible for rock-shatter along the Squamish Highway. This ground water can get into the cracks and formations within the inner structure of the rock and freeze, splitting the rock open.

To try and control the problem stabilization techniques like rock bolting, drilling, blasting and hanging wire mesh systems are used, as are rock scalers.

A rock scaler suspends himself from a harness and a lifeline and works his way down the slope, knocking off loose debris using a four foot scaling bar. The scaling bar is a five to six pound piece of steel with a one inch hex-steel point at one end and a spoon angled heel on the other end.

A rock scaler will climb anywhere from 20 feet to 1,000 feet above the road surface. The highest Schindel ever worked on the Squamish Highway was about 300 feet above the road.

"You clipped the scaling bar onto your belt when you were going up or down the slope and the rest of the time you’re holdin’ onto it with your hands," Schindel explains.

Using a scaling bar is just one part of the work.

"Guys use jack hammers that weigh 55 to 60 pounds that’ll have a piece of drill steel two to 20 feet in length, and some hose," Schindel says. "You gotta’ suspend that while you’re hangin’ vertically on the side of a rock face."

Rock scalers have to be reasonably athletic and unafraid of heights.

"I think most of the guys you’ll find are quite physically active and on the strong side," Schindel suggests. "You don’t find too many guys that are packin’ a bunch of extra weight."

Traffic is stopped in both directions while rock scalers work 20-minute shifts. At the end of 20 minutes traffic resumes.

In order to monitor the rock fall hazard on provincial highways the Ministry of Highways uses a Rock Fall Hazard Rating System to judge various factors: the history of rock fall, road width and ditch effectiveness. Together they show which sections of a highway have high hazard ratings.

"From all these factors, we come up with a point scheme that basically dictates the highest score bluffs in the province right down to the lowest score bluffs," Schindel explains.

The Squamish Highway has some of the highest scored bluffs in B.C. and gets a fair portion of the work.

"You have rock movement all over the province," Schindel continues. "It’s the nature of the rock. It’s gonna’ degrade in places. It happens on the Squamish Highway. It happens in the Fraser Canyon."

As on other highway projects in B.C. workers in the logging industry played a pioneering role in building the Squamish Seaview Highway.

"Guys from the logging industry were taken to build the road so they would have used a lot of shovels, lots of blasting and lots of cat work," Tom Cloutier, a regional manager with Capilano Highway Services in North Vancouver, says.

In the ’50s the idea was that when you were building a highway the more powder you used the more rock you moved. But this resulted in fracturing the rock inwards. Buckley has walked every inch of the Squamish Highway and, he gets nervous when he sees these cracks in the rock faces.

"I’ve seen what happens," he says. "I’ve seen lots of rock come down. I’ve been in close proximity to when rock slides have occurred."

Buckley recalls a job near Strip Creek north of Sunset Beach during a widening of the roadway when a small piece of rock was broken up with three sticks of powder.

"It blew out fine," Buckley recounts. "The only trouble was about 35,000 cubic metres of material slid down the bank an hour after they took it out."

Just north of Lions Bay the traffic heading south comes in clusters; a fast moving mix of young people tail-gating in Hondas and Volkswagens, SUVs with kayaks on top and huge semi-trucks loaded with freight. Past M Creek rock debris scatters the side of the highway.

Closer to Porteau, slim white pipes implanted in rock to drain surface water that seeps down through the bluffs stick out of the rock faces. Schindel recalls that when the holes were being drilled to insert these pipes the water pressure was so great the drills were stopped.

The worst rock slide on the highway occurred in 1968 near Porteau when a piece of rock came down and crushed a Volkswagen, killing two people. But in spite of the horror of debris torrents and rock slides, Dave Buckley has confidence in the spillways and debris basins that have made the Squamish Highway a lot safer to drive.

"They are doing what they are supposed to do," he says assuredly.

Nevertheless when asked if he’d live on the Squamish Highway, Buckley’s answer is a terse, "no!" He’s a firm believer that people should not live below mountains or beside creeks or rivers.

"You can never underestimate the power of water," he says.

Road construction from Squamish to Whistler was easier than from Horseshoe Bay to Squamish. And by 1970 the highway from Squamish to Whistler was paved most of the way. Since then the original wooden logging bridges made from tree trunks have all been replaced and dangerous corners on the highway have been knocked off.

If $10 million could be spent per kilometre the Squamish Highway could probably be made safe, but that amount of funding is not there. If the option to build four lanes to Squamish and three lanes to Whistler is chosen the four lanes to Squamish will be the most difficult part of the highway construction.

If it’s a three lane option from Squamish to Whistler the project will probably take about three years.

Schindel is confident there are areas along the Squamish Highway where work has been done that may be free of rock fall for quite some time. But pin-pointing hazards when stabilizing a rock face is difficult. Because of financial restraints there may always be a certain degree of rock fall somewhere along the highway.

"We do everything that’s humanly possible," Schindel says. "But you’re still battling with nature."



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