MYNORTHWEST NEWS

Big daddy boulder blocks road near Wenatchee until explosives played a role

Feb 10, 2024, 12:12 PM

Big Boulder...

Big boulder blocks the lane of a highway. (Photo: WSDOT)

(Photo: WSDOT)

If it looks big in the picture, imagine it even bigger.

You don’t want to see this thing rolling towards you, even in your car.

A gargantuan-sized boulder fell onto a highway near Wenatchee on Tuesday nearly as wide as half the roadway!

Luckily, it was so early in the morning that there wasn’t any traffic.

With some more crew members from Leavenworth, they were able to get the boulder moved off the road, but it was still blocking the whole shoulder.

Other man vs. nature news: Sinkhole partially swallows a Spokane recycling truck

The Washington Department of Transportation (WSDOT) usually uses something called a “boulder buster” to break up rocks like that.

But this one on Tumwater Canyon Road was so big that regular equipment wouldn’t work.

Instead, crews used bundles of explosives to break it up into smaller rocks.

They say the road wasn’t damaged much, just a few scrapes.

 

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Big daddy boulder blocks road near Wenatchee until explosives played a role