On Monday morning, Kalispell’s U.S. 93 Alternate Route moved out of the planning phase and into the digging phase.

Knife River construction crews brought heavy equipment to south Ashley Creek for clearing and grubbing operations that started with demolishing and hauling away an old railroad bridge.

Next will come the foundation work for a temporary work bridge across the creek that will make construction on the rest of this phase of the bypass possible.

Knife River of Kalispell won the $8.2 million contract for the second phase of the south-half route  stretching 1.5 miles from U.S. 93 north to Airport Road.

Ames Construction of West Valley City, Utah, won the $12.5 million contract for the first phase that runs 1.54 miles from Airport Road north to U.S. 2 West. Ames plans to start construction in a few months.

Ed Toavs, Kalispell project engineer for the Montana Department of Transportation, said he expects Knife River to work through most of the Christmas and New Year holiday season, stripping topsoil and excavating.

Bridge work will start over the next couple of weeks, making the most of the winter.

“Of course you’ve got to make sure sediment doesn’t enter the creek, but once you get through the frost level, this is a good time to do bridge work,” Toavs said.

It will start by dealing with the soft soils and low spots on either side of Ashley Creek where the temporary bridge will be built.

Knife River will bring in specialty crews to prepare what Toavs called stone columns on both sides of the creek, drilling 60 to 80 feet into the earth and filling those holes with gravel to tighten up the soils there.

Another specialty crew will come in to install the wick drain, a material installed in the soil between the stone columns to help drain away moisture and speed up the process.

Crews will be able to pour abutments on either end while those stone columns settle for three months, but they can’t build the final grade with gravel and asphalt until after that time elapses.

“According to their schedule,” Toavs said, consulting the construction plan that Knife River and the highway department agreed on last week, “it would appear that through the end of March they don’t have any other work planned than that bridge.”

By April, though, Toavs expects today’s dozen or so workers to multiply when Knife River starts stripping soil and building the road surface itself.

The main thing to remember, he said, is there will be a small amount of work done on this phase of the bypass.

When Ames gets going on Phase 1 work, the lion’s share of construction for the south half will begin in earnest.

Toavs expects to meet with the Utah firm in early January to work out a start date, which should be sometime in February.

While work on the bridge and soil columns is conducive to winter weather, he explained, Ames needs to excavate soil right from the start to begin road building. The excavation could take place just about any time of the year, but frost would cause problems when crews brought it back to grade with good soil.

They also will run into a considerable amount of sawdust and debris on the old McFarland sawmill site, just south of Appleway Drive’s junction with U.S. 2 West, so will have more filling to do there.

Right now, Toavs said, he just hopes for an early spring to help get excavation under way.