Timeline For North Cascades Highway Reopening Moved Up To June 25

The timeline for the seasonal reopening of the North Cascades Highway has been moved up.

The announcement was made Tuesday by the Washington State Department of Transportation (DOT), which said State Route 20 (SR-20) will be fully open to all vehicle traffic by June 25 - 10 days ahead of initial estimates.

The 37-mile stretch of SR-20, which includes Rainy and Washington Passes, closes annually during the winter months from the Ross Dam Trailhead to Silver Star due to heavy snow and elevated avalanche risks.

The highway usually re-opens sometime between mid-April and early May following snow clearing efforts and post-winter maintenance. This year, however, crews working on those tasks also discovered a number of areas where the roadway had been severely damaged by washouts and debris slides between last November and this March.

Due to the required processes for project bidding and retaining a contractor, it took the DOT until the first week of May to get started on work to repair the damages, but once they finally got underway, crews were quickly able to move up the highway's initially-estimated timeline for reopening, which had been Fourth of July Weekend.

Since May 5, DOT-contracted crews with Burlington-based Interwest Construction Inc. have cleared a large rockslide that came down near Diablo Lake in March, and also worked to perform scaling and slope stabilization in the same area to lessen the possibility of similar slides in the future.

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Meanwhile, Sedro-Woolley-based Trimaxx Construction Inc. has been working under DOT contract since May 13 to repair significant damages caused by washouts along a six-mile stretch of the roadway between Canyon Creek Trailhead and Granite Creek.

Thus far, Trimaxx has worked to remove debris and fallen asphalt and make embankment repairs, but will soon switch their focus to repairing and rebuilding over 1,000 feet collapsed or structurally-compromised road surface, along with approximately two miles of asphalt shoulder, three miles of ditch line, over 1,000 feet of guardrail and jersey barrier, and roughly 15 culverts.

Both DOT contractor crews are working 24 hours a day, seven days a week, to get the projects completed as quickly as possible.

Until then, the North Cascades Highway will only remain partially open to all vehicle traffic from its eastside gates at milepost 171 (Silver Star) to Porcupine Creek at milepost 156, and will remain closed from the west side of Rainy Pass at milepost 156 to Colonial Creek Campground at milepost 130.

Aside from its inaugural opening date of Sept. 2, back in 1972, the latest opening the North Cascades has ever seen was in 1974, when its gates didn't swing open for the season until June 14.

Despite the DOT's latest 10-day improvement of this year's reopening timeline, the North Cascades is still in line to see its latest seasonal reopening in history by 11 days, as well as the first time the highway has ever re-opened during the summer and not the springtime.