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A landslide in western Wyoming has destroyed a key two-lane road, causing massive disruption for thousands of workers traveling to and from the Yellowstone region’s tourist town at the start of the busy summer season.
It’s hard to predict when Wyoming Highway 22 between Jackson, Wyoming, and eastern Idaho will reopen after a landslide near Teton Pass on Saturday caused both lanes to collapse into a ravine.
Compared to other highways in the area, the route over the 8,400-foot (2,560-meter) pass is not important for access to Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks. Most visitors do not go over Teton Pass, and access to the park remains unobstructed.
But for thousands of daily commuters who work in expensive Jackson and live in more affordable eastern Idaho, the highway is a vital, twice-daily connecting route.
Here are things to know as the situation progresses:
Slowly… then together
There were signs that the highway was slipping.
On Thursday, when a crack opened up and the road caved in slightly, a quick patch was put in place to resume traffic, but another landslide a short distance later closed the highway again.
The closure turned out to be a good thing. On Saturday morning, when the section dropped dozens of feet, no one was driving on the already cracked section.
Landslides, like the one in the famous Big Sur area on the California coast, are not uncommon in mountainous regions. Sometimes they happen suddenly, causing fatalities, while others happen gradually and leave people wondering when they will end.
Passenger problem
The question on the minds of many who travel over Teton Pass is when will this crisis end.
With famous views of the Teton Range, two national parks and major ski resorts, Teton County, Wyoming is exceptionally expensive, with the average single-family home here recently priced at more than $7 million and the cheapest home priced at $1.3 million, according to a recent report.
That’s too expensive for many teachers, health care workers, public safety officers and others who work in Jackson, Teton County’s main city. They include 20% of the employees at St. John’s Health, Jackson’s largest year-round employer.
Every day, thousands of people make — or used to make — the more than half-hour drive over Teton Pass from more affordable areas of eastern Idaho. Travelers are now having to drive at least an hour longer and possibly two hours along a different route into Wyoming.
“More distance, more time, more gas,” said Amy McCarthy, who lives near the pass, outside Victor, Idaho.
McCarthy normally has to travel 22 minutes to his job as director of the Teton Raptor Center in western Jackson Hole, the valley that surrounds most of Jackson and Grand Teton national parks. Now he and about a third of the center’s staff for injured raptors must travel an hour and a half or more.
Short-term solutions
The Teton Raptor Center, which needs 24/7 staffing, is working with local supporters to see whose home has space to house its staff for a few nights — a discussion several others in Idaho are having with people in Jackson.
“Everybody is struggling and mobilizing,” Teton County Commissioner Luther Propst said.
Propst said the county is drafting temporary rules to open up more areas for workers to camp, such as parking areas at the Jackson Hole Mountain Resort ski area.
County officials are also considering making its thrice-daily Idaho Commuter buses free and possibly bringing more buses into service.
“When you’re doing 8- to 12-hour shifts, and then four hours of driving on top of that, you want more bus service so people can rest a little bit,” Propst said.
Teton County Commissioner Wes Gardner said the crisis is also an opportunity to make sure buses in service run on useful schedules — a bus running a longer-than-usual route on Monday was less than a third full — and to focus on enabling more workers to stay locally.
“We’re fortunate that we have community and housing like this in Idaho,” Gardner said. “But when something like this happens it really shows how this is a Band-Aid.”
Looking to reopen and rebuild
According to the Wyoming Department of Transportation, partially reopening the road will take weeks, not months.
Gov. Mark Gordon has declared an official state of emergency, which will help access additional resources from the Federal Highway Administration to begin repairs. Gordon spokesman Michael Perlman said Monday that Wyoming Department of Transportation engineers and geologists are assessing the site to begin working on a temporary solution to the road closure.
Bill Panos, former director of the state Transportation Department, said the first goal is to make sure no other landslides occur and that highway workers don’t accidentally cause new ones.
“They’ll come up with a lot of different methods,” Panos said. “The ones that are the fastest and the most cost-effective and the safest are probably the ones they’ll use.”
For now, McCarthy has decided to take a very long drive this coming summer.
“I’m going to download a lot more Audible books,” she said.
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