Crews have opened a single lane of Highway One through the Fraser Canyon to alternating traffic after the road was blocked by a rockslide on Friday.
Bulldozers and backhoes removed boulders – some two metres in diameter – to clear the lane, while scalers worked to remove more loose rock from the cliffs above the Trans-Canada Highway.
"It's in a tricky spot, so this might take a while," said the Ministry of Transportation's Area Director, Anne Hazelwood.
The highway is the only direct road route from the Lower Mainland to the Fraser Canyon, including towns such as Boston Bar and Spuzzum. The road through Merritt remained open.
Hazelwood said the Ministry of Transportation estimated that there were 400 cubic metres of rock that had fallen in total. Scalers cleared some 30 cubic metres of rock from the cliff walls, she said.
No one was hurt when the boulders fell, though truckers were stranded on either side of the Yale Tunnel. Workers opened the road to some truckers who had waited in their trucks through the night.
The last slide was in early December, west of Hope. Government workers inspect the cliffs regularly, but say it's hard to predict when the next slide will take place.
