Anyone else see this? Large chunk of Wyoming's Teton Pass road collapses; unclear how quickly it can be rebuilt The large chunk of a mountain pass highway serves as a well-traveled commuter link between small towns in eastern Idaho and the tourist destination of Jackson. apnews.com
Was over that road several years ago. I think that was one of the curves where you could look back and see why it was called Jackson "Hole".
Last big rain storm about 2 months ago that to us in the flood city area (johnstown pa) in 3 or 4 spots but not quite that dramatically
I do a lot of work in Driggs, and Victor Idaho, which is just on the West side of the Pass. The majority of people who work in JH live in Idaho. The person of average means of course cannot afford to live in JH. This slide is going to have significant effect to a lot of people. They now have to travel at 1.5 hours and go through Afton to get to JH. It is going to be interesting to see how they fix this. Carving into the mountain would seem to be the only real option. If you have ever driven that pass you know a climb and decent it is. It will take years to fix I think. Considering how early snow comes, it will be tough job to get done in a timely manner.
Typical engineers that sit behind computers all day long. On the news they said it will be closed indefinitely, I guess that means a long time. If this was WW2 times that road would be open in 2 weeks time. Another case where billions are spent because of some supposed rare flower or what ever. It looks like that whole road needs to be carved in another area by people that are used to pioneering logging roads how ever they choose to do so, with zero regulations etc. And not on a bunch of fill dirt.
We had a railroad culvert do that years ago here. 85 trains a day re-routed. They pulled everyone from the operating engineers hall, including mechanics and IIRC retirees. 24/7 running dozers flat out.
That seems like the only viable option. In order to repair the fill all the fill and trees that slide would have to be removed. My biggest fear would be the rest of the slope coming on down when you start removing the debris. A cut into the bank and let it roll off seems to be the safest and long term option. However I have no working knowledge of those soils and rock and be totally off.
I'll bet there's a greenie behind every tree by now, ready with a camera. No way will anything be pushed into the creek, nor any surrounding hills be ultilized for fill......
Not sure if it's possible to do there but when researching lime, it has been used to stabilize slopes so they don't wash away. It also stops water from getting into the soil. I think they'd have to build some kind of frame work to hold the soil and then pack it in lifts. A big complicated job for sure.
Well rules can and probably will be bent when there is JH money involved.
Bridging that wash out would be a permanent solution
Dave, you and your lime lol.
Well the word I heard today is they are working day and night. Evans Contracting works one shift and HK contractors working the other. They are carving away/building up the inside of curve. Supposedly they will be able to finish it before the end of the work year. Which is usually Oct. give or take at the top of the mnt.
I just bet there was a 10 year old kid that said to his or her parents, someday this will fall down. Any kid that plays with Tonka toys and dirt knows that is not how to do a road. The horrendous cost of all those yards of fill dirt, for all of that area, just plain stupid. Its time to figure a quick by pass of all that filled area.
I think they should tunnel through it. People die on that pass every year it seems. You can't be over 60K GVW and use the pass. Tunnel through and let semis run through there as well, as opposed to going the long way around.
Seems like maybe there was a rush to complete it and not enough time spent on engineering the best long term solution. Sometimes you need to spend the money do it right.
If the road builder would have just used lime.. Just messin' with ya' WD.
Definitely needs more lime
That failure is the second corner up from the bottom on the Idaho side. There has been a noticeable bump on the cut/fill joint on the downhill end of that fill for years. What puzzles me is how that section, which is a fill, became so saturated. In defense of WYDOT, they deal with some weird soil composition. Entire mountainsides come down relatively frequently. Springs tend to chase clay or bentonite seams. To KSSS' comment, both Evans and H&K are owned by Oldcastle. They can gather up whatever they need in short order if they choose to.
If it is fill, clay mixed with lime and/or other things like fly ash could be a good solution. Apparently lime stabilized soil doesn't allow water to penetrate it once compacted and it compacts to a higher value than clay alone. It makes a better base for pavement and helps prevent cracking. That's why they use it for airports.
Why is the horseshoe in the road? Is it to go around a gully, around a hill, or to lengthen the distance to keep the grade at an acceptable slope? Its difficult to tell from a satellite view.
Update from Casey.
I think this is the correct area. Teton Pass Teton Pass is a high mountain pass in the western United States, located at the southern end of the Teton Range in western Wyoming, between Wilson and Victor, Idaho. mapcarta.com
Looks like a good place for a bridge but then it won’t be as attractive.
If they would have started way back on the right side and cut that down to the grade of the left, back when they were hauling thousands of yards for that goofy loop, they wouldn't be having that problem.
While it looks to me you could cut out the loop, the grade would be to steep. It looks like about 260' of elevation change. A cut off would shorten the distance from 2500' to 1000'. This would go from a 10% grade to a 26% grade. I don't think that would work very well.
The engineer in the video is the epitome of geo engineers. "why didn't they see it" "we need at least 2 months to study the failure, so then we can have a 6 month study of how we can repair it". etc. I'm with terex herder, the grade is too much to cut out the loop or build a bridge. Stabilize the slope by pilings or drilling cassions, Backfill with big rock and step it in sections. The guy in the video has his way, they won't start work for 3 years.
Yeah I couldn't watch 30 seconds of the video. Seems like he loves to hear himself talk. Then again most Youtube people are than way IMO.
One thing to keep in mind is that this alignment was built in 1969, and it is steep country. The road was pioneered balancing cut/fill. All the suggestions are good, but probably not viable in 1969. Also, because it has lasted for 55 years, it is a puzzle as to why it failed now. I don't have any answers, but I do know that Wyoming has dealt with many odd conditions. Togwotee Pass, and the landslide downstream from Hoback come to mind most recently. Sub-surface water or springs seem to be the common denominator, and for whatever reason, these sub-surface flows tend to change over time. Terex herder and CO are correct on the gradient. It is consistent from the bottom to the top @ 10%. Shortening the length and making it steeper would not have worked well. Building a bridge across that fill in the same alignment would have been possible, but that would have changed the cut/fill balance and the entire design, and would have been very difficult to construct.
Someone mentioned a tunnel and that seems like a viable solution with todays tunneling technology and Jackson Hole money. It's been years since I've been to JH and not familiar with that road or the terrain to know if a tunnel is feasible.
That thought has been in the works for awhile, and may well be coming in the future. Aside from commuter traffic between Idaho and JH, dump traffic is heavy as aggregate is more readily available, or at least economically viable, on the Idaho side. With the proximity to Teton National Park which has it's southern boundary just north of Jackson, and the difficulty (I imagine) of obtaining a special use permit to open new aggregate sources on the Wyoming side, a tunnel would keep truck traffic off of the pass and allow 98K gross loads without having to detour around via Alpine.The 60K weight limit restricts anything bigger than 10 wheelers on the pass. You would be amazed how many locals run up to the top of the hill early in the morning in the winter, hike for 45 minutes in order to get 15 minutes of back-country skiing in, and then head to work. In my opinion the pass should not be abandoned as it is very popular for tourists as well as locals, but finding a way to keep commercial truck traffic off of it would be great. Another alignment would be an environmental permitting nightmare, so a tunnel seems to be the best solution to me as well.
I'm seeing this as a win, installed in 1969 and held this long, did anyone get hurt from the landslide?
No, I don't think so. It started as a crack and I believe they shut it down to traffic prior to the whole fill slipping.
That's a fact . . .
Didn't they have the road shut down for a little while then reopened it prior to the slide?
That I am not sure of.
I'm with @cfherrman 55 years is a pretty good run. Mother nature does not care for a lot of man's works. What I remember about that road I posted before, the runaway truck ramp on your right as you go up out of Jackson.
One of the jobs we looked at this year was north of Jackson not too far from Moran Jct. It involved about 65 cy of concrete removal and disposal. We decided not to put in on it for other reasons, but had calculated 7 dump truck loads going to Victor, which cost $100 / dump truck load in disposal fees. Jackson or Dubois was $85 / ton. The savings in disposal fees offset the additional trucking by far. I'm glad we did not put in on it now because we would have taken a bath on that item had we been awarded the job.
Going from Driggs or Victor home with a combine always sucked. We weren't permitted on 31 either, so it was all the way back to Rexburg and then down to Alpine.
My annual allows more weight over 31 than on 33, so when we haul our 345 to Teton Valley we have to go over Pine Cr. (31). We're under 12' wide though, and only70' long.
Typical of a prevailing wage state job. Only a few machines, and I don't see a compactor? Back in the day one place I worked for we had 30 machines on a 30 acre job. We didn't play we got the job done and moved on. State jobs they play, hiway jobs in this area, for say 5 miles of road there are maybe 5 machines on the job, sure lots of non operators with hats and vests watching, and paid more than any operator of course. Whats that tell ya? Oh the mention of the grade about my other post, that is why you cut more out of the right side. I'm looking at those elevations the best I understand them, and does not look that bad for grade, with enough cut on the high side. I'd like to see another mile or more to the right side, how much farther till the peak is hit and it heads down hill? Get some 475 komatsu's and do it.
All this keyboard warrior action is great entertainment.
Probably about 3 miles to the top, and then four or so to the bottom on the Jackson side @ 10%. Here is a google image of the corner they are working on.
You can't appreciate what that grade is like off the internet, you really have to drive it to appreciate the grade. I will share my story. I was pulling (or intending to pull), a 95XT to JH for a job. I had the machine and some attachments. The machine weighed 10K plus the attachments and weight of the trailer, I probably was pulling 14-15K. I was pulling the machine with a 93 Chevy 3500 DRW, manual, 6.5TD. I was going up the Idaho side, and about 3/4 the way up the hill, and I ran out of power. The truck was running fine, I was in first gear and clearly I wasn't going to make it. I luckily found a pull over spot and flipped the rig back around, (try that on that pass sometime), and went back home. Yes the 6.5 TD was no power house, but that hill is one heck off of a pull.
Driven it several times, a video is a poor example for depth perception. White Bird is at 7% and much longer, very hard to describe or get a sense with photos or videos. It's one thing to run out of power totally another on a fast tract to the bottom. Trying to describe to the many on here is a lost cause until they have experienced it.
I can relate. Did the same ONE time with an F350, gooseneck trailer, 287C skid steer and attachments. We were in the neighborhood of 30K gross weight. I used low range and didn't have any problems going up, but it was a dang slow trip down the other side. Even with good trailer brakes you probably only have about one chance to get it stopped if something goes wrong. We just go through Alpine anymore with any kind of weight behind a pickup. It must have been about 2005 when they put a new high-voltage transmission line over the pass and into Jackson. We were hired by the contractor that was building access roads to the tower sites to haul their D8R from that little access road about half way down on the Jackson side up to the top. The permit required WHP to shut down traffic while we made the move. Starting 135K on that road will definetly test the components. It went well though.
The old alignment on Whitebird and Lewiston both seemed a little safer with the switchbacks, although neither is bad if one drives like we were trained in the old days; never go down any faster than what the engine can hold, and if something goes wrong you have enough brakes to get her stopped.
The old roads were hardly safer, biggest issue is no one was running the GVW's trucks run today, even with better jakes and better shoes it's all relative now compared to the Weights.--The weight to allowable speed sign at the top of Cabbage---no one follows those rules, yesterday or today.
Depending on who is manning the Port in Alpine that can be as catastrophic as climbing the pass.
Never had a problem at Alpine. Sage Junction on the other hand, is just lurching between various levels of catastrophe. DEFCON 1 was a one them deciding he really didn't like 28' grain trailer behind a 28' combine trailer. After letting the truck go, he went digging in the book of grudges and found an Idaho rule about the rear trailer can't be narrower than the front trailer. He sent a Trooper after the truck and stopped him 2 miles short of the border. Driver unloaded the combine and drove into the Alpine port.
Then it borders on the stupid--most happens because of poor driver ability. 18 mph is too slow. It creates a hazard with fast moving cars and other trucks. 30 to 35 mph is more like it with the engine brakes of today. * https://www.oregon.gov/ODOT/MCT/Documents/emigranthill.pdf
I always get along with them pretty well. Liz used to be tough, and you don't want to forget to call for clearance if OS/OW, but they were fair to me. Anna's retired now. She treated us well, but we tried not to give her a reason to get upset.
That's a new one on me.
Tell that to the first guy that had to use the escape ramp on Lewiston grade.....oh wait, you can't. He's dead.
Depending on who is manning the Port in Alpine that can be as catastrophic as climbing the pass.
Oh such a savvy answer, how about the rest of the story. It was a Ryerson Steel delivery truck from Spokane. It was late fall early winter, the ramp was improperly built, it held water and froze the pea gravel, the truck never sank. It shot off the end airborne. The driver put himself in a bad position because of his ability/not paying attention. Two things--driver error and poor construction caused that. I've been down the Lewiston many times--just isn't that bad.
Thank you whom ever removed this..... I was reading and trying to figure out *** this was about......
MSN
You're welcome.
Three weeks, O keyboard warriors. 3 weeks. Went from 10% in that area to 11.5% in the repair. Yeeehaw! https://cowboystatedaily.com/2024/0...pass-failure-fixed-in-3-weeks-to-open-friday/
Please....... Keyboard Cowboys.......
That's not enough should have made it 15%---people need crap to wrangle about.
The article says max grade went to 16%. Sketchy vehicle combinations and poor drivers should find an alternate route, but they should just stay off the roads anyway.
It was conflicting info. The graphic shows a change from 10% to 11.5% Perhaps that Is the average grade and there are couple of localized WHEEE spots.
Yeah---even though it's paid for by everyone---only a few should have the right to drive it, really a road for professionals, the average riff raff don't realize it's actually a privet drive, only men with cat hats and buckles know how to handle, oh need a hickory shirt too.
Keyboard warriors ? Funny stuff.
I’m wondering if they put in a “reverse escape ramp” for the backwards rolling truck that missed the shift from 5th to 3rd at that sudden change from 11% to 16%?
It's not the ramp it's the warning signage noting it's going to 16%. But in this world of truckology and the displays of incredible backing skills---------------------------------------. * or go to one or two for control. Not worth the thought really.
I drove through yesterday. The temporary alignment is not bad. Teton Pass rebuild begins, though drivers may have to use bypass all winter The temporary Teton Pass bypass may be temporary for a little longer than expected. www.jhnewsandguide.com
Did you see where that F150 pulling an RV, lost its brakes coming down, wiped out and a lady got killed a week ago or so. I doubt it had anything to do with the repair, but it goes to show how dangerous that pass can be.
No I didn't, but I'm really not surprised. With just my tool box and transfer tank in my pickup I can hold about 35 mph without using any brakes. An F150 with a trailer would be spooky unless you just crawl down it.
That pass kills people on a fairly regular basis. People that are used to pulling trailers on flat ground, have no appreciation for what it takes to safely get off that pass. A maxed out half ton especially, takes skill to navigate coming down without overheating your brakes.
Going to the Sun Road-Glacier Park, if ever driven it, one can smell hot brakes all the way up and all the way down.
I've seen people lose it on i70 in Kansas, flattest place you can get
I took equipment to the Wyoming side via Alpine today and my wife followed me up with her F150. We came back over the pass. Even in second gear in the ten speed transmission I had to touch the brakes a few times coming down the Idaho side. I can't imagine pulling much of a trailer over that with one.
I once picked up a rollover at the entrance to a 30' long driveway that was off a 200' alleyway behind some houses in town.