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After a landslide closed Teton Pass for three weeks this summer, WYDOT has been working toward a permanent fix. Transportation officials recently announced that they need more time to complete all the repairs.
The landslide took out a section of the pass known as the “Big Fill” in early June. The damage led to a full closure of the pass for three weeks until WYDOT opened the temporary detour while working toward a full repair on the same section of highway.
WYDOT hoped work would be finished by this November to beat the snowfall, but as resident engineer Bob Hammond told KHOL, that timeline was a tad ambitious.
“That schedule turned out to be too aggressive, and we want to make sure we get things done right — cross all the T’s, dot all the I’s — and ensure the road will last its 75-year design life.”
With a new completion date of July 2025, WYDOT says the new timeline is more realistic.
The agency recently finished chip sealing the road and has plans for a closure in November for more intensive roadwork.
The rest of the work, though, will have to wait until after winter.
“We just can’t get to finishing out the fill because we’re expecting the ground to be frozen and we definitely can’t get to things like paving asphalt up there at that time of year. We’re better off letting it go into the spring, finishing up a fill and finishing out the asphalt work,” Hammond said.
Hammond added that a lot of work has been done so far to make the agency comfortable having the pass open over the winter, though the grade of the detour is a bit steeper than they would like.
The pass typically has grades of 10%, but the detour section goes up to around 11.3%.
“It’s not the end of the world. We’ve done a chip seal so we have good friction, so people won’t be sliding around and we’re going to change up the guard rail,” Hammond said.
After the November shutdown, Hammond added that the full two lanes of the detour will be open and unimpeded.
