Given a choice in the matter, I'd rather not be buried alive by
anything named "jackass".  Still, it doesn't seem that the mountain
deserves the name as richly as some other candidates.

-jc

On May 13, 2005, at 4:50 PM, Cuyler Page wrote:

>
> This reminds me of another wall
>
> There must be such things everywhere, ready for the news media and
> politicians to feed on.   Here in mountainous BC in the mid-1970's
> there was a major panic because half of Jackass Mountain was about
> to collapse into the Fraser Canyon and eliminate the Trans Canada
> Highway as well as both transcontinental railroads and block the
> mighty Fraser River for six months of back-up behind the new
> natural dam at the same time.   A friend was a surveyor employed to
> mark the progress of the gigantic land slippage, and he said it was
> then moving at 30 feet per year and that he was told by geologists
> that the whole thing could come down at any moment.   The
> government of the day quickly had a second major highway built
> through the mountains to provide some way for traffic to continue
> when the imminently inevitable happened.   They also had hundreds
> of workers all over the mountain side drilling holes and placing
> long steel rods that they hoped would slow the progress of the
> collapse until the new highway was completed  -  at double overtime
> rates for everyone!   Of course the highway construction was
> equally profitable.
>
> Now 30 years later, we haven't heard anything more about Jackass
> Mountain since the late 1970's when new highway was completed.
> The steel rods were supposed to have a 20 year life expectancy.
> No more panic in the daily papers.   No new highway contracts
> lurking.   Life is as normal as possible for BC.
>
> cp in unstable bc
>