Highway crews worked yesterday evening to clear debris from the road in Snake River Canyon, near Jackson, WY when a sudden hailstorm caused multiple rock and mudslides, closing Highway 26/89 and trapping vehicles between fallen rocks and earth up to a few feet deep. Nobody was injured.
“It’s basically a pile of mud and rocks, a few feet deep closest to the cliff,” a driver told the JH News and Guide, “narrowing down across the lanes of traffic and down to the river. The river that was once clear and green is now nice and muddy.”
The highway between Hoback Junction and Alpine was closed while plows cleared enough mud and rock to allow one lane of traffic to begin moving, an eyewitness told the JH News and Guide. According to people caught in the traffic, both lanes were blocked and law enforcement officers had all traffic stopped in the hopes of plowing the detritus off the highway. Three plows were on the scene.
Snake River Canyon is now fully open in both directions.
