Travel warning for the USA: Landslide blocks important Wyoming highway and disrupts commuter traffic in the tourist town | Travel

A landslide that has destroyed a major two-lane road in western Wyoming is causing hassle for thousands of commuters heading to the tourist town at the start of the Yellowstone region’s busy summer season.

After Saturday’s landslide caused both lanes to collapse into a ravine near Teton Pass, it is unclear when Wyoming Highway 22 between Jackson, Wyoming and eastern Idaho will reopen.

Compared to other highways in the region, the route over the 2,560-meter-high pass is not essential to access Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks. Most visitors do not cross Teton Pass and access to the park is unhindered.

But for thousands of commuters who work in expensive Jackson and live in cheaper eastern Idaho, the highway is an important connection that is traveled twice a day.

Here’s what you should know about how the situation develops:

Slowly … Then suddenly

There were signs that the highway was skidding.

When a crack opened up on Thursday and the road sank slightly, traffic was able to resume with the help of a quick repair until the road was closed again by a landslide further away.

The closure turned out to be a good thing. No one was driving on the previously cracked section when it fell several meters down the mountain early Saturday.

Landslides like the one in the famous Big Sur area of ​​California’s coast are not uncommon in mountainous regions. Sometimes they are sudden and deadly, while others occur gradually, leaving people wondering when they will end.

Commuter problem

Many commuters over Teton Pass are wondering when this crisis will end.

Teton County in Wyoming offers famous views of the Teton Range and is close to two national parks and major ski resorts. However, it is also an exceptionally expensive area. According to a recent report, the average price of a single-family home here is over $7 million, with the cheapest costing just $1.3 million.

That’s far too expensive for many teachers, nurses, public servants and others who work in Jackson, the largest city in Teton County. That includes 20 percent of the workforce at Jackson’s largest employer, St. John’s Health.

Every day, thousands of them make – or used to make – the half-hour-plus drive over Teton Pass from more affordable communities in eastern Idaho. Commuters now face at least another hour’s drive, possibly as much as two hours via an alternate route to Wyoming.

“More distance, more time, more gas,” said Amy McCarthy, who lives just over the pass outside Victor, Idaho.

McCarthy normally has a 22-minute commute to her job as director of the Teton Raptor Center in western Jackson Hole, the valley that encompasses Jackson and much of Grand Teton National Park. Now she and about a third of the center’s staff for injured raptors face an hour-and-a-half or more commute.

Short-term solutions

The Teton Raptor Center, which needs staff on site 24/7, is working with local supporters to see who has space in their home to house their staff for a few nights at a time — a discussion many others in Idaho are currently having with people in Jackson.

“Everyone is moving and mobilizing,” said Teton County Commissioner Luther Propst.

The county is currently developing temporary regulations to open more areas for worker camping, such as the parking lots at Jackson Hole Mountain Resort, Propst said.

County officials are also exploring making Idaho’s three-times-a-day commuter bus service free and possibly adding more buses.

“When you’re working an eight- to 12-hour shift and you have to drive four hours, you want as many bus connections as possible so people can maybe take a nap,” says Propst.

The crisis also presents an opportunity to ensure buses run on sensible schedules – one bus on a longer-than-usual route was less than a third full on Monday – and to focus on allowing more workers to live locally, said Teton County Commissioner Wes Gardner.

“We’re lucky to have a community in Idaho and so much housing,” Gardner said. “But when something like this happens, it becomes clear that this is just a Band-Aid.”

In search of reopening and reconstruction

According to the Wyoming Department of Transportation, at least partially reopening the road will take weeks, but not months.

Gov. Mark Gordon has declared a state of emergency to obtain additional resources from the Federal Highway Administration to begin repair work. The Wyoming Department of Transportation has engineers and geologists studying the site to begin work on a temporary solution to the road closure, Gordon spokesman Michael Pearlman said Monday.

The first goal is likely to be to ensure that no further landslides are threatened and that highway workers do not inadvertently cause new ones, said Bill Panos, a former director of the state Department of Transportation.

“They’re going to come up with a variety of different approaches,” Panos said. “They’re probably going to go with the fastest, most cost-effective and most secure.”

For now, McCarthy must prepare himself for very long journeys next summer.

“I will be downloading a lot more Audible books,” she said.

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