Travel through Washington’s mountain passes will be tricky at times this weekend. Drivers traveling cross-state have one fewer route to allow them to traverse it.
State Highway 20, also known as the North Cascades Highway or the “North Cross,” was closed Thursday for the winter.
“With that soft snow and then a mix that will come down heavy on top of it, that is really the recipe for avalanche and debris slides that you’ll see, particularly down in the lower elevations, where it will be warmer,” said Lauren Loebsack from the state Department of Transportation. “The risk is just becoming too great and just to even have crews out going through that area puts those crews at risk. We certainly also don’t want the public traveling through there.”
A stretch of Highway 20 had already been closed twice temporarily around Thanksgiving to allow plows to remove large amounts of snow that fell in short periods of time.
Barriers now stand at the ends of a 37-mile stretch of the highway, from the Ross Dam trailhead on the west to the Silver Star Sno Park on the east. Loebsack says that cordoned off area will likely be expanded by about 20 miles, some on both ends, later in the winter.
“We have an avalanche forecast team and they work with the maintainance shed there. Those crews confer on the conditions they’re seeing” and then make a decision about what should be closed, she said.
Loebsack says this is one of the latest closures of that stretch of Highway 20 in recent years, nearly a month later than last year (November 3). She says her agency tries to keep it open as long as possible.
“It is an essential connection that takes a lot of distance off important travel,” she said. “Say you have a business that ships freight or you are in tourism or recreation and rely on that travel and/or if you travel for a medical appointment, that takes a lot of time off that trip to have that connection there on SR 20 through there.”
Loebsack says she steers people to U.S. Highway 2 as the closest alternate cross-state route, though Stevens Pass often has its own challenges during the winter months.
The opening date for the North Cascades Highway is as variable as the closing time. This year it was reopened on May 11, but in this century, that date has ranged from March 30 to May 25.
