Landslide
10/06/24 00:49
I grew up on the east slope of the Rocky Mountains in Montana. I learned early in my life that you can’t always drive directly from one point to another in the mountains. Sometimes the shortest route in distance is the longest in time. Sometimes there simply isn’t a way to drive over some hills and mountains. You have to go around them. Hiking in the mountains is rarely a matter of going straight up a mountainside. Trails use switchbacks to gain altitude and often have to take circuitous routes to reach a desired location.
We lived straight north of Yellowstone National Park, but there is no entrance to the Park in the center of its northern boarder. You have to either go west or east from my home town to get to a road that takes you to one of the park’s entrances. One of the family stories is that our father, before I was born, drove a jeep up the Main Boulder River, past the mining ghost towns of Independence and Silver City to the end of the road then continued south traveling off road to the slough creek divide, sometimes clearing their path by cutting fallen trees. There was never a road on that route, but it had been traversed by horseback and there was a sort of a trail.
I knew the route because my father flew fire patrol over Yellowstone National Park and I was privileged to fly along with him scouting for smoke from our small Piper Cub. He would have me name every creek and watershed along the way saying that it was critical that pilots know exactly where they were in case they were forced to make an emergency landing. There weren’t many places suitable to land even a very small airplane in the tree-covered steeps below us, but he would quiz me about the names of creeks as we flew to and from the Park.
When I became an adult, I was attracted to back roads and obscure paths. When we lived in Idaho, the quickest route from our home in Boise to my parents’ home in Montana and beyond that to where Susan’s parents lived at the time was to cross southern Idaho to Idaho Falls then cut north to West Yellowstone and up from there to Bozeman where we’d turn east toward our destination. There were, however, a lot of other routes over the mountains between Idaho and Montana. Over the years we’ve frequently followed Interstate 90 over Lookout Pass. But I also enjoy driving over Lolo Pass on US 12. Farther north, Wautoga Pass provides gorgeous scenery. But you can also cross the mountains on Interstate 15 south from Butte, Montana, which is a pretty flat route and not what you might call a mountain road.
On family vacations with our children, we also took the trip over the Lemhi Pass, a dirt road crossing the Beaverheads in the Salmon-Challis National Forest. The top of that pass was the first place the Lewis and Clark Corps of Discovery looked over into Idaho, but they were forced by the terrain to turn back and make their full crossing farther north.
There are other routes as well.
Once, when driving between Rapid City SD and Boise ID, we crossed Wyoming and Went over Teton Pass between Jackson WY and Driggs ID. The route is narrow and winding and spectacularly beautiful. Being a lover of mountain roads and passes, i enjoyed driving over that route. You can’t make that drive today or anytime in the foreseeable future, however. A huge landslide has swept the road away and it was closed indefinitely last Thursday. At the time of the road closure there were 8-inch cracks in the road surface. An attempt to create a detour around the slide area involved removing pavement and heavy fill material from the original road surface, but the slide continued to move eventually taking out the entire road. Fortunately no equipment was lost in the slide and none of the construction workers were injured. Where there used to be a culvert channeling water under the road there now is a huge gap in the highway with no way to get past it.
Those needing to travel between the mountain towns in the area will need to go a long ways around for the foreseeable future. The Wyoming Department of Transportation has no estimate of when the damage will be repaired. At this point a repair has not even been engineered. It will be a challenge coming up with a route for the highway now that the slide has occurred.
Seeing photographs of the road with a missing section brought to mind other times I’ve seen pictures of mountain roads destroyed by the natural process of shifting mountains. In 1959 an earthquake centered in Yellowstone National Park caused an entire mountainside to slide burying the road and the river. A new lake formed. Eventually engineers used explosives to create a spillway for the lake and new roads were constructed, but the shape of the land was permanently changed by the earthquake. A few years ago extensive flooding breached several roads within the Park necessitating some pretty extensive emergency engineering and design of roads.
Change is a part of mountain landscapes. Of course change is a part of all landscapes. The rise of oceans that is a part of global climate change will continue to reshape coastlines. Sometimes major events such as earthquakes which can be accompanied by huge tsunamis when occurring under the ocean will reshape coastal areas. Geologists tell us that there is a huge fault off of the coast of Washington where we live that could cause major disaster at some point in the future. The tsunami evacuation routes that are posted near our home are informed by those predictions. Fortunately for us our house is in the safe zone to which others would evacuate in the event of a tsunami. We are nearly twenty feet higher than the area that would be affected by a 10 meter wave which is theoretically possible following a major offshore earthquake.
On occasion our eyes are opened to the massive power of this ever-changing planet that make human engineering efforts small by comparison. The landslide on the Teton pass is one more reminder that our world is constantly changing. Only time will tell what the future may bring.
We lived straight north of Yellowstone National Park, but there is no entrance to the Park in the center of its northern boarder. You have to either go west or east from my home town to get to a road that takes you to one of the park’s entrances. One of the family stories is that our father, before I was born, drove a jeep up the Main Boulder River, past the mining ghost towns of Independence and Silver City to the end of the road then continued south traveling off road to the slough creek divide, sometimes clearing their path by cutting fallen trees. There was never a road on that route, but it had been traversed by horseback and there was a sort of a trail.
I knew the route because my father flew fire patrol over Yellowstone National Park and I was privileged to fly along with him scouting for smoke from our small Piper Cub. He would have me name every creek and watershed along the way saying that it was critical that pilots know exactly where they were in case they were forced to make an emergency landing. There weren’t many places suitable to land even a very small airplane in the tree-covered steeps below us, but he would quiz me about the names of creeks as we flew to and from the Park.
When I became an adult, I was attracted to back roads and obscure paths. When we lived in Idaho, the quickest route from our home in Boise to my parents’ home in Montana and beyond that to where Susan’s parents lived at the time was to cross southern Idaho to Idaho Falls then cut north to West Yellowstone and up from there to Bozeman where we’d turn east toward our destination. There were, however, a lot of other routes over the mountains between Idaho and Montana. Over the years we’ve frequently followed Interstate 90 over Lookout Pass. But I also enjoy driving over Lolo Pass on US 12. Farther north, Wautoga Pass provides gorgeous scenery. But you can also cross the mountains on Interstate 15 south from Butte, Montana, which is a pretty flat route and not what you might call a mountain road.
On family vacations with our children, we also took the trip over the Lemhi Pass, a dirt road crossing the Beaverheads in the Salmon-Challis National Forest. The top of that pass was the first place the Lewis and Clark Corps of Discovery looked over into Idaho, but they were forced by the terrain to turn back and make their full crossing farther north.
There are other routes as well.
Once, when driving between Rapid City SD and Boise ID, we crossed Wyoming and Went over Teton Pass between Jackson WY and Driggs ID. The route is narrow and winding and spectacularly beautiful. Being a lover of mountain roads and passes, i enjoyed driving over that route. You can’t make that drive today or anytime in the foreseeable future, however. A huge landslide has swept the road away and it was closed indefinitely last Thursday. At the time of the road closure there were 8-inch cracks in the road surface. An attempt to create a detour around the slide area involved removing pavement and heavy fill material from the original road surface, but the slide continued to move eventually taking out the entire road. Fortunately no equipment was lost in the slide and none of the construction workers were injured. Where there used to be a culvert channeling water under the road there now is a huge gap in the highway with no way to get past it.
Those needing to travel between the mountain towns in the area will need to go a long ways around for the foreseeable future. The Wyoming Department of Transportation has no estimate of when the damage will be repaired. At this point a repair has not even been engineered. It will be a challenge coming up with a route for the highway now that the slide has occurred.
Seeing photographs of the road with a missing section brought to mind other times I’ve seen pictures of mountain roads destroyed by the natural process of shifting mountains. In 1959 an earthquake centered in Yellowstone National Park caused an entire mountainside to slide burying the road and the river. A new lake formed. Eventually engineers used explosives to create a spillway for the lake and new roads were constructed, but the shape of the land was permanently changed by the earthquake. A few years ago extensive flooding breached several roads within the Park necessitating some pretty extensive emergency engineering and design of roads.
Change is a part of mountain landscapes. Of course change is a part of all landscapes. The rise of oceans that is a part of global climate change will continue to reshape coastlines. Sometimes major events such as earthquakes which can be accompanied by huge tsunamis when occurring under the ocean will reshape coastal areas. Geologists tell us that there is a huge fault off of the coast of Washington where we live that could cause major disaster at some point in the future. The tsunami evacuation routes that are posted near our home are informed by those predictions. Fortunately for us our house is in the safe zone to which others would evacuate in the event of a tsunami. We are nearly twenty feet higher than the area that would be affected by a 10 meter wave which is theoretically possible following a major offshore earthquake.
On occasion our eyes are opened to the massive power of this ever-changing planet that make human engineering efforts small by comparison. The landslide on the Teton pass is one more reminder that our world is constantly changing. Only time will tell what the future may bring.
