UPDATE: Temporary Detour Around ‘Catastrophic’ Teton Pass Failure Will Take Weeks
A “catastrophic failure” of Wyoming Highway 22 over Teton Pass overnight Friday has washed away a huge section of the lifeline corridor between Jackson, Wyoming, and Victor, Idaho, the Wyoming Department of Transportation reports.
No vehicles were on the road as it had been closed earlier Friday because of a mudslide.
Road troubles began Thursday after a large crack stretching across both highways was spotted in the road.
A significant portion of the highway at milepost 12.8 has collapsed into the ravine below, while significant portions of the remaining road are cracked and tilted, WYDOT reports, adding that the road faces a long, indefinite closure.
“We're looking at a few weeks, at the very least,” Stephanie Harsha, a spokeswoman for WYDOT District 3, told Cowboy State Daily on Saturday morning. “At this point, a temporary fix or any kind of detour would be just as cumbersome and costly as a rebuilding the road or another more permanent fix. Our engineers are kind of weighing out those options right now.”
Signs Of Trouble
Teton Pass temporarily closed on Thursday so WYDOT could patch the large highway-spanning crack reported earlier that day. When road crews inspected the damaged section of Highway 22 on Friday, the pavement patch had been damaged and more movement was detected.
“That landslide continued to move despite efforts to put in a temporary detour around it,” Harsha said. “That movement caused it to take out both lanes of travel on that particular section.”
WYDOT road crews attempted to repair and rectify the damage while developing a long-term solution. They were on the scene overnight when the destructive landslide happened.
“Our crews were working in the area last night to construct that detour,” she said. “Nobody was hurt, and no equipment was damaged, but the road is damaged to a point where I don't believe that there'll be a quick or detour.”
Highway 22 was closed for most of Friday because of a mudslide that covered both lanes near milepost 15. WYDOT spent most of the day clearing the road, but reported that the mudslide “breached the roadway with mud and debris, overwhelming the channeled drainage ditch and culvert.”
No Easy Alternatives
With Teton Pass closed until further notice, commuters who regularly travel along the primary route between Jackson and Victor will need to find an alternative route. The best workaround is to travel south through Alpine, Wyoming. That takes an hour and 45 minutes compared to the 35 minutes it takes over the pass.
Harsha knows that will be difficult for many.
“That's such a difficult thing for this area,” she said. “Teton Pass is a lifeline for people who commute and work in and out of the Jackson area. Depending on where you live, especially on the Idaho side, most people detour around Swan Valley and then into Alpine, Wyoming, and come up Jackson from the south.”
WYDOT will share any updates on the status of Teton Pass through its website and social media channels, in addition to the WYDOT 511 app.
“Our engineers are evaluating the area, and they should come up with a plan forward as far as what we're going to do in repairing that section,” Harsha said.
What About A Tunnel?
The closure sparked an immediate conversation on social media about the need to build a tunnel through Teton Pass.
Although the possibility of such a tunnel is remote, the Wyoming Department of Transportation has discussed it before.
Former WYDOT Director Luke Reiner told Cowboy State Daily in 2021 that he had it on his wish list of projects that he hoped would be covered by President Biden’s $2 trillion infrastructure plan.
Reiner said there was a feasibility study of such a project. It never went anywhere, but he said there were real benefits to it.
“One, it avoids the avalanche-prone area, and that would help really make that road more passable,” he said, pointing out that in a part of the state where the cost of living is outlandish for workers, that stretch of highway plays an important role in the economy by getting workers to and from their jobs.
“It’s not lost on us that that has become a major commuter route for employees who work in Jackson and live in Idaho,” Reiner said. “The average daily traffic on that road is one of the highest in our state.”
Andrew Rossi can be reached at arossi@cowboystatedaily.com.
