Snoqualmie Pass had 72 closures in nine weeks

Collisions, heavy snowfall and the related threat of avalanches have delayed traffic on the state’s busiest mountain pass far more frequently this winter than in recent years.

One or both directions of Snoqualmie Pass were closed 72 times over a nine-week period between Dec. 4 and Feb. 5, mostly due to snowfall or avalanche control work.

State Department of Transportation officials were unable to say how many times the pass closed last year. However, closures amounted to 22 hours last winter for the eastbound and westbound lanes combined, none of which was related to avalanche control, DOT spokeswoman Summer Derrey said. During the recent nine-week period, the closure time for one or both directions totaled more than 300 hours.

Snoqualmie is not the highest highway pass in the state – that honor goes to 5,575-foot Sherman Pass on State Route 20 east of Republic. But it is by far the busiest. Roughly 28,000 cars and trucks travel Interstate 90 over Snoqualmie Pass each day. And when it closes, the effects are felt by businesses across the state.

So far this winter Snoqualmie Pass has received about 320 inches of snow, significantly more than the 30-year annual winter average of 233 inches. That, coupled with previous construction work at the pass, has also led to the increased closures, DOT spokeswoman Meagan Lott said.

The department removed a snow shed over the westbound lanes in 2014 in preparation for expanding the highway from four to six lanes and elevating that portion of the roadway on bridges. When the work is completed, avalanches and debris will slide under the roadway, but in the meantime that work has heightened the chances of snow and debris sliding onto the roadway this winter.

“When we removed the snow shed, we also removed some trees and some of the rock face that would previously also help stop debris,” Lott said. “But we needed to do that to construct the westbound avalanche bridge.”

The project is expected to be completed by 2018, Lott said.

Much of the westbound traffic was stopped for almost nine hours Feb. 5 when a truck driver working for a Toppenish company lost control of his tractor-trailer rig, causing an eight-vehicle crash just west of the pass. Two people died.

Washington State Patrol troopers say there have been a large number of spinouts this year, but fatal or injury collisions on a scale similar to Feb. 5 have been rare.

In fact, there have been no fatal collisions east of the summit on Snoqualmie Pass this year, said Trooper Darren Wright, a public information officer whose region includes Kittitas County. Between Nov. 1 and Feb. 10, there were just 10 injury collisions, four more than there were during the same period last winter.

Trooper Chris Webb, a State Patrol public information officer whose division covers the western side of the summit in King County, was unable to provide specific numbers last week, citing a higher number of calls and trooper reports that would need to be examined first.

However, 105 total accident reports were made to the State Patrol from Nov. 1 to Feb. 10 for a 10-mile area west of the summit, about 20 more than the previous winter, Webb said. Some of those could be duplicates based on more than one passing motorist reporting the same incidents. The vast majority were noninjury events.

“Many of these collisions are likely related to drivers going too fast during snow and ice conditions,” Webb said.