Little Cottonwood Canyon closed again after interlodged guests given 4 hours to leave
SALT LAKE CITY (KUTV) — Guests and employees at ski resorts in Little Cottonwood Canyon have the chance to escape after being trapped for days as avalanche after avalanche impeded travel up and down state Route 210.
The Little Cottonwood road was opened at 5 a.m. to downhill travel only. UDOT will be be closing the road again at 9 a.m. for further debris removal and avalanche mitigation. Road access between towns and resorts will be restricted as well.
Authorities were allowing some vehicles to travel uphill, though, including garbage trucks and trucks carrying food and beverages. Police directing traffic at the base of the road were allowing in multiple vehicles, but also turning away multiple more.
Officers told 2News that only "critical employees" were being allowed to travel into the canyon. Anyone attempting to drive up SR-210 for recreation purposes was turned away, and authorities were not allowing drivers to wait in hopes of a reopening after 9 a.m.
A flood of vehicles poured down the highway when UDOT gave the green light, and that stream of traffic slowly tapered off through the time allotted. By 8 a.m., cars leaving Little Cottonwood Canyon were few and far between.
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The Utah Department of Transportation's cleanup efforts have been even having been ongoing throughout. Workers were even forced to dig out their own equipment after an avalanche buried heavy equipment along with roads. Aerial views of the canyon showed some of the first large incidents showed the paths of the slides, where trees had been ripped from the mountainside.
Consequentially, the trees themselves posed a risk to workers who were clearing the piles of debris with sharp, splintered wood jutting out of the snow.
The transportation department has not issued an estimated time of reopening, though the weather Friday was offering them a better chance for productive road clearing.
Throughout the closure, there were at least 30 avalanches in the canyon, according to UDOT, and workers were facing at-times Sisyphean tasks with threats of new avalanches covering the freshly-cleared road. But for the first time in a while, all ski resorts in the area reported zero inches of new accumulation;. While the risk was still present, the lack of a new layer of snow on top of older, weaker layers did make chances much better that crews could clear the road - and have it stay cleared.
