All lanes near pass to reopen

SEATTLE – Traffic on Interstate 90 through Snoqualmie Pass east of Seattle should be back to normal by the middle of next week, weather permitting, but work to repair damage from a huge rockslide is far from done, state transportation officials say.

Boulders the size of refrigerators tumbled onto the road east of the 3,022-foot summit Nov. 6, and traffic on the state’s principal east-west artery has been down to one lane in each direction for a short stretch since then.

Last weekend, workers removed about 1,500 yards of rock and dirt, or about 150 dump-truck loads, Transportation Department spokesman Michael P. Westbay said Monday.

“If the weather cooperates, we are anticipating opening (all) four lanes of I-90 by the middle of next week,” Westbay said.

Rock stabilization and cleanup is continuing about 80 feet above the road, and workers expect to remove another 60 dump-truck loads of rock and dirt, he said. Also planned are installations of a mesh similar to a chain-link fence and 46 rock stabilization bolts 18 feet to 46 feet long. Motorists should expect occasional temporary closures, he said.

The slide was the second major rockfall in as many months in the Snoqualmie Pass area, where average weekday traffic amounts to about 28,000 cars and trucks. Three women died in September when a boulder crushed their Volvo west of the summit.

State geologists also are completing a slope stability report covering 32 miles along Interstate 90, and they have identified 40 slopes as potentially hazardous, with nine given top priority for stabilization work, Thomas Badger, the department’s assistant chief engineering geologist, told the Seattle Times.