Cleanup Begins on Snake River Canyon Highway Covered By Landslide

Construction crews early Monday morning started to clear debris from a 50-foot-high landslide in Snake River Canyon that closed the main road between Jackson and Lincoln County.
Efforts to clear U.S. Highway 26-89 will run nonstop from both ends of the landslide until the road can reopen to traffic again, though officials said that could take several days.
The scenic stretch of highway between Hoback Junction and Alpine Junction has been closed since May 14, after the 2,000-foot-long slide oozed an estimated 40,000 cubic yards of dirt across the road.
State transportation officials held up on clearing the rock, dirt and vegetation from the road until the landslide became more stable.
The material in the lower moving section of the slide was moving at a rate of about 1 foot per minute, according to a Wyoming Department of Transportation media release on Monday. Previously, that area was moving about 6 feet per hour.
WYDOT officials were also seeing more stability at the top of the slide, which hasn’t moved for two days, according to John Eddins, the department’s District 3 engineer.
“It looks like a really slow-moving river of mud,” Eddins said in the release. “That’s good news for us because the large mass is breaking up and coming down with the moving material.”
WYDOT officials said it’s unclear when Highway 26-89 will reopen because of changing weather conditions and unknown road conditions underneath the slide.
So far, all signs indicate that the road underneath is intact, but the condition of the road can’t be determined until the debris is removed, the release stated.
Gov. Matt Mead visited the landslide site on Monday. A spokesman for Mead said the governor believes WYDOT has done “a great job” of responding to the problem.

The closure of Highway 26-89 has forced hundreds of Lincoln County residents who work in Jackson to take a circuitous detour into Idaho and back over Teton Pass — in many cases doubling their commute time.

It’s also caused worries on both sides of the landslide about the economic impact the highway’s closing could have as the summer tourist season approaches.