The great big road update

Big news this week is Flathead County is grading the North Fork Road. They started at Canyon Creek and yesterday, Thursday, they were working on Wurtz Hill. Two, yellow bellied roadgraders, are doing a great job, especially since there is also a water truck spraying the road as they work.

This helps the most from Whale Creek south since all of that stretch has had six inches of crushed rock applied in recent years and most of that has had magnesium chloride applied to control the dust.

North of Whale Creek grading is less effective since that part of the road is more like a dry creek bed than an actual road. North of Trail Creek Road is probably the worst since it is the narrow ditch that hasn’t seen much more maintenance than infrequent grading since World War II and mud and ruts are horrible in the spring. Granted, the County has installed additional culverts to help drain water from the road but anything more—like building an actual road—would be very expensive and is not likely to happen without federal dollars.

From the Community Hall to just north of Trail Creek Road, the road has no muddy stretches, but is just a rough, rocky, dusty trail. Grading helps for a short time, but any soil is pulverized, turned into dust, leaving the rocks, and the wind deposits the airborne dust into Glacier Park.

Best parts of the road north of Whale Creek are where private landowners have taken advantage of Flathead County’s cost share program to apply dust abatement. This year the total cost of mag-chloride was $2,200 per half mile. The county pays half and the landowner half. Besides virtually eliminating dust, the dirt remains on the road like mortar between the rocks, making the road much smoother.

Of course, the road remains somewhat controversial. Some still want it paved and some want to keep it primitive. Recent application of crushed rock, bentonite and mag-chloride has quieted the controversy but is just a temporary solution to a permanent problem. It is not likely that federal subsidies will continue forever.

Plus, traffic is increasing by nearly 20 percent every year, according to Glacier National Park. If the road returns to a dusty trail, will traffic be reduced? If so, by how much? If the road is paved, will traffic continue to increase? If so, by how much?

Problem is, both scenarios require guessing and both sides tend to predict tragedy which would result in destruction of the North Fork as we know it. No one really knows how to predict the future accurately. I suspect we will settle on maintaining the status quo for the foreseeable future. What do you think?