OLYMPIC NATIONAL PARK — Construction crews repairing Hurricane Ridge Road at the site of a January slipout aren’t working in a hole anymore.
Having removed the water-soaked, fine-grained fill material that had served as the road’s foundation since 1958, workers with Bruch & Bruch Construction Inc. of Port Angeles had, by Wednesday, moved in two-thirds of the rock and gravel that is intended to give the road a firmer perch.
Work on the route to the popular snow recreation area at Hurricane Ridge is on schedule, and the road is expected to be reopened the first week of March — if there are no surprises in the weather, said Barb Maynes, Olympic National Park spokeswoman, Wednesday.
By then, the rest of the road’s foundation is expected to have been built, bringing its level up to the two edges that, after about 100 feet of the road collapsed in a Jan. 18 washout, ended at a gaping hole about a half-mile north of Heart O’ the Hills campground.
“The contractor is taking advantage of the excellent weather,” Maynes said.
The job is contracted at $1.4 million. Federal Highway Administration engineers estimate that the total cost will exceed $2 million when the work is done.
No detour around the slipout was possible, park officials said, and so there has been no paved road access to Hurricane Ridge since the washout.
For several weeks, crews worked in a hole, digging deeper down the 65-foot to pull out sodden dirt, and loading it into trucks that traveled west of Port Angeles to dispose of it.
For the last week to week-and-a half, Maynes said, the trucks that once left the site full and returned empty have been traveling out empty and coming in with rock and gravel to fill the hole and allow crews to build a new road bed.
Crews now work in a smooth dip, with the only hole in evidence being a small trench for a culvert.
The two-lane road, which winds up 17 miles to Hurricane Ridge north of Port Angeles, originally had been built over such fine-grained fill in that spot near Heart O’ the Hills campground that constant rain soaked it beyond its ability to absorb water, Maynes said.
“Rather than allowing the rainwater to flow through, as would happen if there were rocks, the fine-grained sediment absorbed water,” she said.
“It got to a point where it couldn’t absorb any more and just slid away.”
The new, coarser fill material is expected to allow water to run through — and keep the road’s foundation intact.
Crews also replaced the 24-inch culvert at the bottom of the road’s foundation with a 42-inch pipe. The pipe is for a tributary of Ennis Creek, Maynes said.
Although the original culvert hadn’t failed, Maynes said, a larger one was considered an improvement for drainage under the road.
“Now they are reconstructing the slope with rock and gravel to make it more stable,” Maynes said.
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Managing Editor/News Leah Leach can be reached at 360-417-3531 or leah.leach@peninsuladailynews.com.
