Major alpine paving completed on Sun Road

A six-mile alpine section of the Going-to-the Sun Road in Glacier National Park neared completion this fall. Crews finished final paving of the road from Big Bend on the west side to Siyeh Bend on the east side, Park spokeswoman Denise Germann said last week.

Work continues on the west side of the highway in several locations. The last section of alpine work is from Haystack Creek to Big Bend. That work started this summer. The alpine section of the Sun Road should be entirely completed by 2013.

Since the early 1990s, the National Park Service and the Federal Highway Administration have spent $101.5 million on the highway, most of that over the past six years.

In 2005, Sen. Max Baucus secured a $50 million earmark in a federal highways bill to fix the highway. Later, the Obama administration sent $32.3 million in federal stimulus money toward the project. Stimulus money was used to reconstruct the road from Big Bend to Siyeh Bend.

Rather than entirely shut down the highway, road work has been done in phases - and plenty of phases remain to be done, including the sections between West Glacier and Logan Creek and from St. Mary to Rising Sun. The remaining projects, however, are contingent on the National Park Service securing funding in the coming years.