UPDATE: Road through Wind River Canyon reopens

Posted 4/27/17

“It’s literally raining rocks in the canyon. ... It’s a nasty mess today,” Cody Beers, public relations specialist for the Wyoming Department of Transportation in Riverton, said Friday.

WYDOT crews planned to pull out of the canyon by …

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UPDATE: Road through Wind River Canyon reopens

Posted

A spring snowstorm caused rocks to fall continuously in the Wind River Canyon south of Thermopolis, prompting the closure of U.S. Highway 20/Wyoming Highway 789 through the canyon. The highway reopened Saturday morning.

“It’s literally raining rocks in the canyon. ... It’s a nasty mess today,” Cody Beers, public relations specialist for the Wyoming Department of Transportation in Riverton, said Friday.

WYDOT crews planned to pull out of the canyon by dark Friday for safety reasons, and then returned Saturday about 5 a.m., Huckfeldt said. WYDOT geologists have assessed the stability of the canyon walls.

“The area adjacent to the road shoulder is designed to collect fallen rocks before they enter the roadway, but these areas have filled with rocks, and rocks are now falling and rolling into U.S. 20/Wyoming 789,” said WYDOT maintenance engineer Lyle Lamb of Basin.

Beers said WYDOT has two snowplows and a front end loader working to clear rocks off the highway through the canyon.

“They started plowing rocks this morning, and they have been doing it ever since,” he said Friday afternoon. “They make one pass, and when they go back, it looks like they haven’t even been there.”

Beers said Wilson Brothers Construction of Cowley already has equipment on site. Wilson Brothers crews have been working on a project to remove rocks in the canyon that were loosened previously by landslides in May 2015.

“That contractor is going to stay around and help us out,” Beers said. “We’re going to have to add on some work to their current contract.”

That’s a good thing, because WYDOT doesn’t have equipment big enough to deal with some of the large rocks that have fallen over the last few days, Beers said.

A huge rock that fell in the canyon Wednesday afternoon was as big as a two-bedroom house, he said.

“We can’t move that. We’re going to have to use some dynamite and some big equipment to get that thing down to a smaller size that we can manage,” Beers said.

“Neither WYDOT nor the contractor will remove any of the rocks until things are safer,” Lamb said, “and the cleanup effort will most likely take a couple of weeks to complete.”

For road conditions, visit wyoroad.info or call 511.

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