WILSON, Wyo. — Commuters, rejoice! WY22 over Teton Pass has reopened to traffic following a 14-hour closure due to an avalanche blocking the road.
The Wyoming Department of Transportation (WYDOT) announced that the road opened just after 5 p.m. on Monday. The agency’s avalanche mitigation efforts in the wee hours of Monday morning brought down a major slide from Glory Bowl that blocked both lanes of the highway under a mountain of snow. WYDOT noted it was the “largest controlled avalanche seen by crews in recent years,” approximately 30 feet high and 250 feet wide at milepost 10.
“We’ve had some snow and a lot of wind and warming temperatures,” WYDOT Avalanche Program Supervisor Don Lawless said in a press release. “It rained on the snowpack last night as well and that changed the whole equation. We knew we needed to get up there and do some mitigation work.”
Yellow Iron excavation company was contracted to use a dozer for debris cleanup, and the Idaho Transportation Department pitched in with a loader on the west side of the slide, per WYDOT. Avalanche clearing work was expected to last until Tuesday afternoon, per the agency’s original estimate. Some Jackson hotels even offered discounted room rates to stranded commuters.
“We are very lucky to have such exceptional neighbors to the west in the Idaho Transportation Department,” WYDOT District 3 Maintenance Foreman Troy Jerup said in the release. “We have an excellent working relationship with their crews, which is a benefit to drivers on both sides of the pass. Without them, we would have not been able to open this road as quickly as we did.”
WYDOT asks that drivers drive cautiously and stay alert while contract crews continue to work along the roadside tomorrow.
