CLIENTS
Government of Canada
Province of British Columbia – Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure
Focus Engineering

IN ASSOCIATION WITH

DESCRIPTION
Twinning the Trans-Canada Highway from Lake Louise, AB and Golden, BC through Kicking Horse Canyon is a multi-year, multi-phase $1 billion project involving some of the most innovative highway engineering in North America. Phase 3 East of the new alignment eliminated the hazard from some large avalanche paths, but created new potential hazard from some steep cut slopes constructed adjacent to the road alignment. Soon after substantial completion of construction activities, these slopes produced avalanches to the edge of the alignment during a storm event in the winter of 2011.

SERVICES RENDERED
My work on this project showed the winter 2011 avalanche cycle to be a statistical climax event and validated the as-built effectiveness of the ditch for mitigating this design avalanche from the cut slopes. This enabled the project engineer to authoritatively address these concerns to provincial and federal ministries of transportation and confirm success in reducing overall avalanche risk to the Trans-Canada Highway.

• Review of as-built drawings
• Snow climate hydrology analysis
• Ditch catchment capacity modelling
• Forensic review of winter 2011 storm cycle
• Evaluation of avalanche risk against BC Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure guidelines