Flaggers still at Richardson Highway MP 210 as rock blasting wraps up

Flaggers and pilot cars are still running traffic through Milepost 210 of the Richardson Highway, where blasting crews took down the last of an unstable rock outcrop last week. The state expects to wrap up this week.

Crews had first worked the rock by hand, with pry bars and air pillows. About 15 feet of it was still standing at the end of Sunday's shift, 12 feet high and eight feet thick.

The state hasn't posted the work on Alaska 511, the traveler information service, which lists two other Richardson Highway projects.

The corridor matters to freight. The state's freight plan counts more than 150 trucks a day south of Fairbanks on the 366-mile Valdez-to-Fairbanks route. The state budgeted $323,853 for the job.

The problem was flagged a year ago. At a September 2025 update, Northern Region preconstruction engineer Al Beck described "a rock along the hillside fairly close to the right-of-way that needs to come down and some scaling associated with it."