Roll Call Alaska 2015

mxw1 wrote:
The turnoff for Haines Alaska is along this section of the Alcan hwy and it is 155 miles of perfect road. It looks like it was paved yesterday. It gets the same weather as the Alcan does, so I don't believe the excuses of Permafrost and Frost Heaves.
The difference is; It gets maintained. Shame on Yukon Gov't.

No, Mike, the difference is that permafrost heave varies depending on a number of factors including the type of soil that the road is founded on, the moisture conditions at that location, altitude, summer daytime high temperatures, depth of the freeze-thaw zone, etc.

If you want a better idea of the difficulties of building a highway over permafrost, read a history of the construction of the Alcan pioneer road in 1942 by the Corps of Engineers. They actually had D-8 Cats disappear into the mud after the original vegetation was stripped from the permafrost and the permafrost began to thaw. They finally resorted to laying down corduroy roads (horizontal tree trunks laid side-by-side), something the Army probably hadn't done since George Washington was Commander-in-Chief.

Most of the Haines Cut-off is located at a higher altitude than the portion of the Alaska Highway between Destruction Bay and Border City. In addition, much of it is built on bedrock or very shallow colluvial soils, instead of the very wet alluvial soils and muskeg found along that portion of the "Alcan" (you can tell the differences in soil moisture by the presence of all the stunted black spruce, called "taiga," along the highway).

Finally, that part of the Cut-off actually was rebuilt just a few years ago. So, if the Haines Cut-off weren't in better condition than that frost-heave damaged section of the Alaska Highway, some transportation department manager would be out of a job. And, since you didn't complain about the section of the Alaska Highway from Watson Lake to Whitehorse, which is also located in the Yukon and where even I can generally go 100 KPH, isn't it just a little unfair to blame the Yukon government for the conditions? Personally, I had to slow down more when towing my trailer over a 10-mile stretch of the frost-heaved Tok Cut-off near Slana than I did on most of that section of the Alaska Highway (and the Tok Cut-off is in Alaska, so not the Yukon's responsibility at all!).

PS: When the highway was gravel, instead of paved, and there were highway maintenance facilities in Haines Junction, Destruction Bay, Beaver Creek, etc., just to grade the road, frost heave was actually less of a problem. But back then tourists complained about broken windshields from rocks thrown up by speeding trucks. So, the DOTs just can't win!