When a rock or mudslide covers a highway in BC, it can cause major traffic problems. When a slide occurs on a forest service road, the usually narrow access and remote location can make clean-up a little bit trickier.

Last November, there was a rock fall along the Bush River Forest Service Road. The Columbia Forest District, which has their main office located in Revelstoke and a field office in Golden, received a report that a rock roughly half the size of a pickup truck had fallen onto the road around the 50 kilometre point.

At that time the road was closed from kilometre 49. Public access was blocked with a gate and lock-blocks. A crew began working on the site about four weeks ago, and now repairs on the wall and road are almost complete. If all goes according to plan, Forest Service workers hope to have the road open again by July 15.

“We closed the road because it was unsafe,” explained Kurt Huettmeyer, Forest Service Manager. “We then had engineers come in.”

Geotechnical engineer Patrick Martin was brought in by the Forest Service to survey the rock and oversee the scaling and blasting. After seeing the site, he determined the rock that was dangerous and needed to be removed. This was done with blasting, and machine and hand scaling.

Huettmeyer explained that rock slides often occur during Spring and Fall, when the freeze/thaw cycles are the most prevalent.

The rock that is being worked on is quartzite, which is one of the strongest rocks. This has increased the cost of the work that needs to be done, and also has resulted in the workers needing to modify the tools used for the project.

Often there is not a lot of money available to fix the infrastructure of smaller roads such as forest service roads, permit roads and non-status roads. When a major event occurs, such as a rock fall or a mudslide, these roads can often become deactivated if the funding or need is not there to fix them.

“There are lots of smaller road systems in the region,” explained Huettmeyer. “Licensees, such as LP (Louisiana Pacific) are responsible for maintenance, and we are in charge of infrastructure.”

The Bush River Forest Service Road, which is maintained by LP, is not only used by the company for timber access, but is also used for recreational activities by many in the area.

“Twenty percent of Golden’s TSA (timber supply area) was cut off,” explained Andrew Davies, Contract Manager.

“It has been an inconvenience for the public because they are not able to go where they are used to going,” said Huettmeyer. “It (Bush River FSR) gets a fair bit of winter use, and is used by hunters in the spring.”

For the current project to go ahead, funding was received through the federal infrastructure program.

“The province is matching the federal funding, which came to $130,000,” explained Davies. “The money was approved at the beginning of June.”

The slide occurred at what Davies described as the highest risk section of the road. On one side is a rock wall, which has now been made safe through efforts from the engineers and scalers, and on the other side is a steep drop down to the Bush Arm. The road was originally built in the 1970s.