Beartooth Highway rebuild assessment underway - (pic heavy)

[AVID]

This is literally in my backyard - There is a "Peaks to Prairie" bike race I join each year.
This will suck for the annual onslaught of snowmobilers. :evilgrin:





Engineers beginning assessment of how to reopen Beartooth Highway

By The Associated Press

<snip>
A team of engineers and a landslide expert are preparing to assess the mudslide damage to the Beartooth Highway, hoping to make their initial inspection on Thursday by flying to the trouble spots by helicopter, the Montana Department of Transportation said.

Much of the highway between Red Lodge and Yellowstone National Park, via Cooke City, can't be reached by vehicle, said DOT spokeswoman Charity Watt Levis. Heavy rain and snow storms across the Beartooth Plateau this past week caused major damage, "like missing road," she said.

"We hope to have a better plan and (repair) timeline by the end of next week," Watt Levis said Wednesday. The highway, described by the late Charles Kurault as "the most beautiful roadway in America," winds along alpine peaks and lakes and crosses 10,947-foot Beartooth Pass.

It traditionally opens for the Memorial Day weekend but is now closed indefinitely. All of the Beartooth Highway damage is on the north side of the Beartooths. Yellowstone officials announced on Wednesday that a portion of the route will open Friday, from Cooke City to Long Lake. That would allow access on the south side to within about 10 miles of the Montana border.

<snip>

[alcibiades_mystery]

1. I took the Beartooth Pass on a cross country trip in 1998

It was awesome. Didn't know it was currently closed. That's too bad.

[AVID]

2. This is typically the roads busiest time - beautiful!

Whats ironic is that with all this rain we have been getting - its more beautiful and green than it has been in many years, and you can't get up there to see it.

[alcibiades_mystery]

3. I went through in mid-June, 1998

We were driving back from San Francisco, and we went up north to Portland, then took the Columbia River Gorge, and up through Spokane, through Coeur d'alene (sp?), down into Montana, and into Yellowstone. We took the northeast corner out of Yellowstone and on up to the Beartooth Pass to rejoin I-90 (I think) up there somewhere (I'm a new yorker, so forgive me if the West is a big blur). But Beartooth Pass was awesome, as I said. It was still snowy up there, and I have great pics of me and my brother overlooking a sky of clouds and mountain peaks below us! For a couple of city boys, this was a treat indeed.

BTW...we pulled a U-Haul trailer in a 1990 Nissan Sentra over that pass, so it was a bit hairy...

[maxsolomon]

4. in the destruction of roads

is the preservation of wilderness.

that last pic tells me, for internal combustion engines at least, that road is toast for a few years. i have no sympathy for snowmobilers at all. they are the same as ski-dooers, dirt bikers & leaf blowers to me.

time to take the nicest bike ride ever, with a few nasty portages.