The second phase of the Cottonwood Hill Project on Highway 97, 18 kilometers north of Quesnel, starts this summer.
The Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure announced that Enviro-ex Contracting Ltd. secured a $12.6 million contract to realign that section of the highway and remove material from the slide’s top.
During construction, travelers might face single-lane alternating traffic with delays up to 20 minutes, as well as single-lane traffic in both directions.
The Ministry aims to complete this work by the summer of 2025, as part of a three-phase project to stabilize the road on the historic landslide site.
Changing weather patterns have severely impacted the Cariboo in recent years, causing hundreds of landslides and road washouts in 2020 and 2021.
The Cottonwood Hill Project is a component of the Cariboo Road Recovery Projects, which aim to restore access where feasible, benefiting tens of thousands of people who use these roads and highways.