The Sea to Sky corridor's winter of disconnect continued this week with extended closures of Highway 99 not once but twice - the first for landslide north of Horseshoe Bay and the second for a truck-bus accident just south of Function Junction.
Those trying to go north or south on the highway were out of options for about eight hours on Sunday (Feb. 4) because of the landslide and about the same amount of time - though authorities working at the crash scene managed to open the highway to single-lane, alternating traffic for about an hour before closing it again - on Monday (Feb. 5).
The driver of the northbound Gray Line tour bus suffered injuries to both his legs when a load of logs on a southbound logging truck that was trying to negotiate a sharp right-hand turn rolled off of the truck's trailer and into the bus's path, RCMP Cst. Sherri Lund, who added that she thought any injuries to the truck's driver were minor.
On Sunday, the extraordinarily wet winter, combined with repeated freezing and thawing in rock fractures and recent construction blasting likely led to the slide, said a Ministry of Transportation (MOT) spokesman.
The slide cut off a two-lane stretch 300 metres south of the Ansell Place exit between Horseshoe Bay and Lions Bay."We may never find the exact cause," said Mike Long, MOT spokesman. "But rather than there being one trigger, it was probably a combination of all three."
The bottom of the hillside buckled first in a sort of mini-slide, and then tonnes of dirt, rubble, trees and boulders from about 15 metres above the highway came crashing down within three or four seconds.
It missed Squamish resident Jennifer Little, who was driving her silver 4x4 past the slope as the landslide struck, by a few feet at most.
"I looked in my rear-view mirror and saw nothing but trees coming down. I pulled over to see if any cars made it through after me and if anyone had been trapped, but I couldn't do anything," she said. "After I got on my ferry (at Horseshoe Bay), I just lost it."
Further back, Vancouver businessman Bill Brandes was returning from a snowboarding excursion in Whistler with the aim of making it to a Super Bowl party. He was cut off by the slide, but didn't let it stop him.
"I parked my car on a residential road nearby, went down the embankment and walked along the railway to the other side and someone came and met me," he said, adding that it was the second slide he had experienced on the Sea to Sky.
"You live here and you have to expect it," he said. "All that blasting they've been doing, it's got to be doing something to (the slope)."
When it was over, a good-sized slice of the mountain had come down on the rainy Sunday morning around 9:30 a.m., creating a muddy, rocky blockage of around two metres high and 12 metres thick.
On both sides, dozens of vehicles came to a grinding halt. By then many cell phones were already flipped open, with those caught up calling the emergency services or letting loved ones know what had happened.
Long estimated that 300 to 500 cubic metres of debris fell on the road, closing it for more than eight hours and disrupting the travel of thousands of people between Vancouver and Whistler.
Long stressed that with the completion of the new overland route from Horseshoe Bay, there will be no further need for Sea to Sky travellers to use the old route.
"The worst problems areas would be bypassed and that is one of the reasons we're proceeding with the (Eagleridge) route," he said.
Bill Manson, now 85, was the president of the Squamish Chamber of Commerce when a huge slide cut off the town for 12 days in October 1990. With considerable geological knowledge of the region due to almost six decades in construction and logging, he recalled that when the Sea to Sky highway was built in the 1950s the railway already existed beneath it next to Howe Sound. This, he said, made it difficult at the time to clear the area of debris because nothing could be dumped below the highway as it would damage the busy tracks.
He was not surprised by Sunday's event.
"There are quite a number of different rock formations and quite a bit that is fractured and dangerous," he said, adding that disturbing the rock in construction would add to the danger. Manson said he has long advocated a new overland route from Vancouver along the Mamquam River Valley, which he described as "more stable".
"We are never going to be at peace with the Sea to Sky highway," he said.
A local geological engineer, Frank Bauman, said the MOT and Kiewit, the construction firm working on the Sea to Sky upgrade, did "an incredible job in bolting and netting the road" to keep it safe for travellers.
"What's important to stress is that this not a killer highway We haven't had a death by landslides in many, many years," he added.
