Glacier Plans Summer Roadwork Rock Walls Along Scenic Route Need Immediate Attention

The crumbling rock walls that support the Going-to-the-Sun Road will be the first focus of overall road repairs in 1999, officials announced Wednesday.

Butch Farabee, assistant superintendent, said the decision was made after a recent meeting with Federal Highway Administration officials in Vancouver, Wash.

He said about $4.2 million already has been allocated to Glacier for road work in 1999. The plan is to use that money to repair the weakest portions of the park’s most scenic route, hopefully completing the project within one year.

Ten sites have been designated for the initial work, followed in subsequent years with work on 12 other sites.

Farabee said park officials agreed that repairing trouble spots on the 65-year-old road is an urgent need.

“It will only take one major slide to occur, or one wall to collapse, and that road will close down for a long time,” Farabee said.

The park will come up with a plan to minimize impacts on summer traffic. Work on the upper stretch of the route is possible only in the summer, at the height of the tourist season.

Bob Dunkley, a park planner, said the road’s structural problems are serious in some places.

The plan is to have one closure on the west side of the Continental Divide and one on the east at any given time. After one site is repaired, work crews would move to the next.