Driving north of Saskatchewan River Crossing can be a jarring experience, and we’re not talking about the jaw-dropping views. Some 30 kilometres of the Icefields Parkway surrounding the intersection of Highway 93 and Highway 11 will be repaved this summer, making for a smoother ride, but causing delays along the way.

The improvement project is slated to start in May and will continue throughout the summer, with crews working six or seven days a week.

“It’s a matter of trying to priorize the worst sections,” said Terry McGuire, Parks Canada’s Director of Highway Services for the mountain parks. “Based on a visual inspection from an engineering perspective, this was one of them. There is quite a bit of potholing, cracks are widening and the pavement is starting to de-laminate.”

While a 15-kilometre section of the road south of the river will be resurfaced as well as a stretch to the north, the actual intersection area will be left as is for now, according to McGuire.

“We have to do some engineering work at the intersection,” he said. “We will be altering the pavement markings and lane widths, and we are looking at the bridge deck as well.”

Extensive road work on the Trans-Canada Highway east of Lake Louise is set to begin this month, but the more northerly project has a later start date, in part because of Parks’ expectation that temperatures will be lower and snow along the road will persist for several weeks. That’s not the only reason. The resurfacing is being done by means of hot in-place recycling, a method which requires specific equipment and contractors.

“It’s not a new overlay,” McGuire explained. “You heat up the existing layer and add a little bit of asphalt to bring the height back up. This is a method that we’ve employed on other stretches of road... around Tangle Falls north of the Icefields Centre.”

Only a small number of Canadian contractors can do this work, and McGuire realizes that Parks is competing with several similar projects in Western Canada.

“That’s certainly why we’re out to tender as early as we are,” he said. “It’s our hope that there will be interest and there is still enough room in the contractor’s work schedules.” The tender process closes this week, and as a result overall project costs were unavailable to the Fitzhugh by press time.

One impact of the road work is clear, however. With traffic down to one lane for the stretches being repaved, 15-minute delays are anticipated in both directions. This summer’s work is merely the first step in a longer-term process to improve and resurface the Icefields Parkway. McGuire confirmed that road work would continue in the future, but couldn’t give more specific detail.

“At this point in time what we’re looking at is an overall assessment of the pavement from one end to another and we have it rated in terms of the way it rides and any safety concerns,” he said. “A lot of it really depends on costing and in places the pavement has gotten to the point where hot in-place recycling can’t be done, so we’d have to be looking at a more significant project.”