Latest blast whittles once-tall Elwha River dam to about 35 feet in height

OLYMPIC NATIONAL PARK — Glines Canyon Dam isn’t gone yet.

But it’s becoming more difficult to spot the remnants under the rubble.

Demolition crews set off about 2,000 pounds of explosives packed into a concrete stub of the formerly 210-foot-tall dam at 5:20 p.m. Sunday.

It reduced it from a height of about 55 feet to about 35 feet.

“It went exactly according to plan,” said Rainey McKenna, spokeswoman for the Olympic National Park.

The blast removed 900 cubic yards of concrete and shifted the river’s flow from the eastern side of the canyon to the western side, McKenna said.

The new stub of the dam is about 75 feet wide and more than 20 feet thick at the top, and much of it is buried under concrete rubble, rocks and silt, she said.

McKenna said the canyon is not yet passable for salmon.

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