A chunk of ice breaking off a glacier on the B.C. Alberta border caused a massive avalanche that buried the Trans-Canada Highway and shut the transportation corridor down for almost 12 hours.
A chunk of ice breaking off a glacier on the B.C. Alberta border caused a massive avalanche that buried the Trans-Canada Highway and shut the transportation corridor down for almost 12 hours.
Parks Canada visitor safety specialist Brian Webster said a member of the public alerted emergency response crews of the avalanche covering the highway at 3 a.m. Wednesday morning (Feb. 8) and it was cleared and traffic flowing by 1:30 p.m.
Webster said crews were out conducting avalanche control work on that section of the highway yesterday, so they were quite surprised to find out a class 3.5 to 4 slide came down the Mount Stephen avalanche path overnight.
“As you know we have had a relatively large amount of snow this past week and we did a round of avalanche control yesterday,” he said. “We did not get very many big results and went to bed last night feeling good about the road and the avalanche paths.”
Webster said once Parks Canada began investigating the avalanche it found that the glacier at the top of Mount Stephen had a chunk of ice break from its tip, and that is what caused the slide. It is also what made the avalanche large enough to fill a berm designed to collect snow at the bottom and protect the highway and overflow.
“I do not know of very many other avalanche paths that affect roads that have a glacier at the top, he said. “That makes the Mount Stephen avalanche path unique and somewhat difficult to forecast, which is why we have a large berm at the bottom. Unfortunately this avalanche was beg enough and able to fill up the berm and overflow onto the highway.”
Emergency crews who responded to the call at 3 a.m. arrived to find a 40 to 50 metre section of the highway covered in over a metre of snow. No vehicles were caught in the path of the avalanche, although one semi truck became wedged in the snow afterwards and the driver was evacuated while the cleanup occurred along with other stranded drivers in both directions.
