"Why are they such weenies with I-90 anyhow? It's ridiculous. "<br><br>I was wondering the same thing. I thought we had readers on this board that either were or knew people who were contracted by DOT for control work. Maybe they'll weigh in.<br><br>My amateur theory is: at Stevens the areas of concern are pretty much concentrated between the first big round turn past Tunnel Creek down to maybe a little past Yodelin. Particularly for Old Faithful and that area, it's pretty easy for control to get to the starting areas of these areas and check things out, even in the middle of the night if they had to. They can just run a snowcat to Grace Lakes and traverse across and start hucking charges. So possibly they can keep knocking that stuff down one instability at a time due to the easy access. (They even used to park an old tank down at the Wellington lot and use it as a howitzer but I haven't seen the old tank since the start of Gulf War II ...) <br><br>At Snoqualmie the areas of concern are harder to reach. Moreover, there was a particularly avalanche safe route over the eastern side of Snoqualmie once upon a time, but then someone decided to fill it full of water ... leaving the routes along the edges (this applies to old RR/xc trail too) more or less in the worst relative position for being piled upon, with quite a few old clearcuts above as starting zones.<br><br>Edit to add: just got done reading an article about highway avalanche control in the January issue of "Cascade Times", a little regional ad rag that used to be called the Snoqualmie Pass somethingorother. As ad rags go, it's actually pretty good. The av control article was moderately but not exhaustively informative on what they do at Snoqualmie, and features an interview of "head weenie" Craig Wilbour. Rather ironically, a caption on a photo of Craig right on the front page says: <br>"He (Craig) says readers can find a friendly weather link at
www.turns-all-year.com/wealinksfr.html
"
Maybe we shouldn't be calling someone with access to ample supplies of ammonium nitrate and fuel oil a "weenie", specially since he knows where we hang out :D
