Drill Bits and Dynamite...Part Eighteen...The South Interchange

This will be mostly photos from various stages of construction of the South Interchange on Segment 1 of the Sea to Sky project. Because traffic needed to keep moving while the new sections of highway were built, temporary lanes were shifted back and forth to allow the contractor to do the required work. A section of road or concrete structure would get built in the area where traffic was moved from. When that was done, the traffic was moved over again to allow another part to be constructed. This required a lot of planning and teamwork to keep things on schedule.
This was the first time that I had worked so close to a very major highway. The drivers rushing to the ferries at Horseshoe bay, or zooming up to Whistler created new dangers that I had not encountered before. It soon was apparent that keeping myself and everyone else safe was going to be a full time job. We had people cursing at us from their cars, women yelling at us for harming Mother Nature, drunks coming into lane closures...pretty much the whole nine yards.

The South Interchange changed shape so often, and at times so radically that even the crews struggled to navigate through the detours and lane changes.

The South Interchange outlined...

The next few Lo-res photos are of Cut 1...which was right beside the traffic on the Upper Levels Highway. Cars and trucks either rushing to and from the ferries...or on the "Indy 500" route to and from Whistler.

Concrete walls going up to support a future overpass/tunnel structure....one of the many lane variations for live traffic in place

At the top of the photo, an abandoned on ramp from the old highway configuration

Concrete getting pumped to a new footing...the right hand lane is for traffic going north to Squamish and Whistler. The lanes going under Eagleridge overpass are for traffic to the ferry terminal.

this is a shot from approx.2000 feet up in the helicopter to get the whole South Interchange in the photo. You can see where the traffic has been pushed over to make room for construction work.

Bowen Island in the background and a BC ferry heading over to Nanaimo on Vancouver Island

Another concrete structure to support the new 4 lanes that will travel through the brand new overland route. Cut 4 in the upper right.

Eagleridge overpass and some very nice houses right across from the project. I have written about relations with the neighbors in another post

There is a pile of wood debris on the ground in Cut 4....this was trucked in from a new section of the road by 6 wheel drive dump trucks, it will get picked up and taken away by highway dump trucks

Right where that black car is parked is where we did a 9000 cubic meter blast....pretty much nerved me right out...if it would have went wrong...it could have easily hurled rocks at the expensive houses across the highway.  Fortunately it went off without a hitch. In some lost shoebox...there is a video of the blast.

The big yellow boxes are old shipping container converted to tool storage units. Sometimes called C-can or conex

You can see a different lane configuration here...the excavator is prepping a ramp for a new temporary lane to go in.

Drill Bits and Dynamite ....Part Seventeen

Here's a quicky blog post...just to tell a story about a set of photos from one day, one minor event on the Sea to Sky highway project.

After drilling of a round of blast holes, the operator of a Tamrock Ranger 800 rock-drill was moving to a new location. The pathway to and from the drill site was really nothing more than an unimproved goat trail, high above the main access road. At one point the driller felt the road give way on his blind side..and the machine leaned over. The driller stopped the machine and got out to check his situation.

It wasn't a nasty situation...but it had all the makings of one. The operator could have said nothing and tried to wiggle his way out of the predicament. Instead, he called out and asked for another opinion.
It was decided that the safest thing to do was to put a heavy duty tow line from the drill to a large excavator to pull the drill away from the edge. Also because the 385 excavator was close by, we decided to use that to support the underside of the rig to prevent a rollover in the event that the road collapsed even more.

It took the cooperation of several crews and operators...and a little bit of lost production time, but the result was positive. The extra steps ensured the total safety of the operator and the 600,000 + dollar drill rig. 

It doesn't look too bad here....but the drill rig is very heavy...and a bit top heavy

Waiting for the excavator that will do the pulling

This is a better photo of the situation....soft ground....and a long ways to roll if it goes over

Waiting for the tow cable and extra hoe

Driller/blaster Mike Trufanenko helping out, foreground....Construction boss Mario Plante in behind

That would be an ugly tumble

We used the 385 Hoe to support the low side to guarantee that we wouldn't end up with a roll-over if things went from bad to worse

It was great to have this big machine close by to help out

Randy Coward on the pulling Hoe, 385 operator Wayne Tyson and construction boss Mario Plante

The setup that got it done...the hoe on top at the right will pull with a large steel cable....the 385 hoe underneath supports the bottom side

 

 

 

 

 

Here is a photo from Cut 9 that can be found elsewhere in the blog...I'm putting it here to show where these drillers have to go to get their job done.

The early days of Cut9....blasting the pioneering road in to gain access...at this point here it is almost exactly 100 meters down to the Squamish highway