Skip Stenkamp drives a city of Bend street-cleaning truck through a neighborhood to clean up basalt gravel and pine needles in Northwest Bend on Tuesday morning.

When snow falls in Bend, causing slick roads, the gravel trucks come out. But now it is time for cleanup.

Cleaning up the gravel starts as soon as the snow and slippery driving conditions stop, said Hardy Hanson, street division manager for the City of Bend Public Works Department.

“We put it down at 4 (a.m.) and pick it up at 10 (a.m.) sometimes,” he said.

It’s a big cleanup job though, with the city maintaining more than 400 miles of roads in Bend. Hardy said finishing the work may take months.

Snowfall this winter and so far this spring in town has been light, and so has the amount of gravel put down by city road crews.

The city keeps a pile of 12,000 tons to 14,000 tons of gravel at the public works department near Pilot Butte.

By the end of snowy winters the whole pile will be gone, Hanson said. This year the city has used about 5,000 tons of gravel.

The gravel is composed of basalt, crushed into quarter-of-an-inch rocks, Hanson said. The city used to use cinder but Hanson said it switched to basalt because the uniform size leads to less dust and fewer cracked windshields. The size also allows the city to reuse some of the gravel. Last year city road crews collected about 500 tons of gravel to be reused on the streets and another 200 tons for fill dirt.

Hanson said it has been about a month since city road crews put down gravel this year.

“We don’t hesitate to use it,” he said,” “but we don’t do it if we can help it because we have to pick it back up.”

When they do put gravel down, Hanson said they focus on priorities such as hills, intersections and school bus stops.

The Deschutes County Road Department uses sanding cinder, crushed red lava rock, rather than gravel, said Tom Shamberger, operations manager for the department. This year county road crews have put down about 4,000 tons.

“Sometimes we put a lot more down,” he said, “but this year February and March weren’t very busy months.”

Like the city road crews, their county counterparts are now out busy cleaning up the cinders. Differences in city and county roads lead to different styles of cleanup, though, with the county maintaining more rural roads. Shamberger said the county collects about 10 percent of the cinders, mainly those that build up at traffic circles or corners. The rest is swept to the side where it combines with shoulder gravel. The county maintains about 700 miles of paved roads, such as Knott Road, Cottonwood Road and the Old Bend-Redmond Highway.

The city and county have similar budgets for snow traction, with Hanson saying the city spent about $50,000 this year to purchase gravel and Shamberger saying the county spent $45,000 on cinders.

It doesn’t look like it will be snowing in town soon.

“Snow levels are pretty high, especially during the day,” said Diana Hayden, meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Pendleton.

Daytime snow levels near Bend are at about 8,000 feet, she said Thursday, and nighttime snow levels are about 4,500 feet.

The high temperature today should be 60 degrees, according to the National Weather Service. Highs Saturday into next week should remain in the 60s.