Highway 20, BC - Closed

Central BC has had a very wet spring and a fast thaw and a lot of snow coming out fast. The campground we stayed in at Cache Creek was nearly washed away 3 weeks prior to us arriving.

Tom/Barb wrote:
Central BC has had a very wet spring and a fast thaw and a lot of snow coming out fast. The campground we stayed in at Cache Creek was nearly washed away 3 weeks prior to us arriving.

This washout was not caused by weather. Some reports this morning mentioned that a irrigation pipe burst and eroded the ground underneath the highway.

Damage

certainly doesn't look like a irrigation pipe could do that ..

Google maps doesn't show any farm land at the 12 mile point on #20 west of Williams Lake. mostly forest and one ravine after another.
There is 1 big circle farm much farther west. operating off its own wellhead.
awesome washout tho.

165 yards of road bed gone.

Ill bet the guy who got washed away had to have clean draws when they got him out.

Tom/Barb wrote:
Google maps doesn't show any farm land at the 12 mile point on #20 west of Williams Lake. mostly forest and one ravine after another.
There is 1 big circle farm much farther west. operating off its own wellhead.

The washout is about 25 kms (15 miles from the Highway 97 junction.) As you cross the Sheep Creek bridge at the Fraser River, the road rises then curves to the right. This image I took in 2013, is from the east side of the bridge looking west. The sliver of highway in the top left is where the washout occurred.



And yes, there is farmland up and to the right of the highway there. Here is a good image of the area.(Not my image.)


I'll be up there in a couple of weeks and the highway should be all repaired by then.

Thanks for the pictures, must have been one hell of a pipe to deliver that much water to do that much damage. we were just down 97, the Frasier is very high, and fast from all the runoff.

There is a lot of irrigation in the area for hay crops, that is beef cattle country. If a pipe had been leaking for some time the water may have been backed up then burst through a natural dam. We have had quite a time with road washouts here in B.C.

Tom/Barb wrote:
Thanks for the pictures, must have been one hell of a pipe to deliver that much water to do that much damage. we were just down 97, the Frasier is very high, and fast from all the runoff.

As I wrote last night, some reports yesterday morning mentioned an irrigation pipe that eroded the ground below the highway.

Remains to be seen what the real cause was and there is supposed to be an update later today or tomorrow morning.

romore wrote:
There is a lot of irrigation in the area for hay crops, that is beef cattle country. If a pipe had been leaking for some time the water may have been backed up then burst through a natural dam. We have had quite a time with road washouts here in B.C.

There are vary few irrigation systems that will provide that much water.
Unless there is a irrigation canal in the area above the wash out I really don't believe it was an irrigation system that caused this, simply because of the amount of water it would have taken to do this.
Nearly identical incident occurred on Highway 20 in Washington state. simply heavy spring runoff, pluged a culvert, and overflowed the road taking 350 yards of road bed with it.
Wa #20 closed

The update today stated that there is no conclusive cause for the washout.

“There was an existing culvert there, but we don’t have a root cause in the incidence. There isn’t one identifying feature in the field that is saying ‘this is what caused this.’”

It could be a combination of factors, he added.

“One could be high groundwater, there is a small creek in the area and we think it was certainly flowing, and we did have some water pooling on the ditch side of the embankment, but certainly nothing that would have been of a significant concern to us leading up to the incident.”

Agriculture irrigation does take place nearby but Hubner said there is nothing indicating it was a contributing factor at this time.

I was reading on FB that the reports yesterday morning that mentioned an irrigation pipe is because there is a largish irrigation pipe but further down to the bridge and people first thought that this pipe may have leaked for some time under the roadway which slowly undermined the soil and eventually caused the roadway to give way. Albeit, on a smaller scale, it is apparently not that all uncommon of a problem with old irrigation pipes in some older farm and ranch areas.