Technical Tours

Technical Tour 1

Tour: Snoqualmie Powerhouse and I-90 Rock Slope Stability
Date:  Friday, 15 June, 2018 9:00 am – 6:00 pm
Cost: $125. (includes transportation and all tour costs) Limited to 30 persons.

This all-day tour includes the historic Snoqualmie powerhouse and a look at the extensive rock slope stabilization activities of the Washington State Department of Transportation on Interstate 90. Our morning stop will be the Washington State Department of Transportation’s field office for the ongoing I-90 Snoqualmie East Project. Major efforts on rock slope stabilization began in 2005 after a series of rock falls closed portions of Seattle’s primary transportation artery to the east. In the afternoon, we will visit Puget Sound energy’s Snoqualmie powerhouse, the world’s first underground powerhouse opened in 1898. It is still operating with its original, if modified, generation units.  The stop will include the 270 foot high (82-m) Snoqualmie Falls.

Technical Tour 2

Tour: Whidbey Island Landslides, Lahars, Tsunamis, and Earthquakes
Date:  Saturday, 16 June 2018; 9:00 am – 6:00 pm
Cost:  $125. (includes transportation between Westin and Whidbey, lunch, and all tour costs) Limited to 40 persons.

The focus of this trip will the geohazards of the Puget Sound region. We will look at the glacial layering and how it contributes to landslides including a major landslide that occurred in 2013, a year prior to the deadly Oso Landslide in similar glacial materials. We will see evidence of liquefaction from paleoseismic events and make a stop at the surface rupture of fault that moved most recently in the past 200-500 years and again approximately 1200 years ago. Be prepared also for some of Puget Sound’s most inviting scenery.