The Hugh Allan Drive rock fall will be cleared up ahead of schedule after City of Kamloops crews hired an additional excavator to do the heavy work.

The cleanup along the roadway just south of Costco was initially expected to take until Friday.

But it reopened around dinnertime on Tuesday, although it was expected to close again Wednesday morning to finish the work, said City street crew leader Augie Pietramala.

It will reopen for good sometime Wednesday afternoon, he said.

The extra equipment was used to break up some of the larger boulders that came down.

“I had some in here that were probably six feet by six feet by six feet,” said Pietramala. “And there were some big, big ones up here. (The machine operator) had a hammer on them and actually split them up into smaller rocks so that actually worked out well.”

The rock fall was attributed to the freeze and thaw of the season.

The geotechnical firm Golder and Associates assessed the slope’s stability on Monday and determined that the area was stable.