Wyoming
Permanent Fix For Teton Pass — Rebuild The Mountain — Could Be Done…
Now that Teton Pass has been temporarily repaired and commuting life is back to normal, motorists have moved on while they putter up and over the steep mountain pass.
Less than three weeks after a section of mountain dropped off and took part of Wyoming Highway 22 with it, the temporary fix was done.
For the Wyoming Department of Transportation, the work is just getting started.
WYDOT was heralded and lauded as much as a government entity can be after fixing a vital stretch of roadway in record time. Typically, tempers flare and patience wanes when travelers encounter “Roadwork Ahead” signs. Not as much this time.
WYDOT played the hero when it promised a temporary bypass within three weeks of the road failure June 8 when 200 feet of Highway 22 washed down an embankment.
The department delivered, and the pass was back open 20 days later on June 28.
“I think every Wyoming resident or regional commuter can be proud of their transportation department,” WYDOT Director Darin Westby said. “WYDOT staff from a variety of departments and areas of expertise rolled up their sleeves and got to work for the people. A master-level class in public service.”
Still, a long-term solution looms, and questions about what that might look like. A bridge? A reroute or redesign of the road? A tunnel? Or, is the answer staring everyone right in the face?
Plans now are for WYDOT to rebuild the mountain and the road on its original spot. Basically, rebuild the mountain.
Dips And Curves
Why can’t the temporary fix be the permanent solution?
The tighter, steeper curve constructed inside the old switchback appears to be perfectly functional, especially with qa speed reduction to 20 mph that tends to slow down some of the more impatient locals trying to get to work on time.
“Well, it’s a little bit steeper and curved a little tighter than what we want. It’ll do for temporary road, and works fine that way, but we can’t leave it like that,” said WYDOT resident engineer Bob Hammond.
Using less real estate for the new curve means the grade has increased to about 11.2%. The entirety of the pass is a consistent 10% grade, which is about as steep as engineers like to go when it comes to ascending and descending.
Already at 10%, runaway trucks have been a problem barreling into the tiny burg of Wilson at the base of the pass in Wyoming.
A new high-tech truck arrester system was installed in 2021 to replace the old sand barrel runaway truck ramp. It has been used more than once since it opened.
A curve is another road aspect that has federal guidelines.
First, centripetal force is carefully measured. That’s the leaning energy passengers feel when they are pushed to one side of a vehicle or the other. Depending on the banking of the road, a speed advisory is sometimes posted ahead of tighter curves.
“You look at what is the superelevation of the curve, the banking. I think the bank is about 4-5% there. You could go as high as 6% with a bank,” Hammond said.
Keeping A Close Eye
WYDOT geologists were monitoring the known problem section of Highway 22, dubbed after the catastrophic failure the Big Fill, decades before it completely collapsed.
Slight movement was detected and fixed every once in a while, particularly during a very wet spring.
What happened leading up to June 8 was the perfect storm of variables, experts report. The ultimate failure was attributed to heavier-than-normal runoff which compromised the 70 feet of fill put in place by engineers in the 1960s when the road was built.
Over the years, water seeped into the fill material causing increasing instability. It all came to a head last month.
Intensified monitoring continues at the Big Fill. Two distinct methods are in place. A nearby radar trailer scans the new curve bypass in real time. If it detects any movement, an alert is sent to department officials.
In addition, the geologist department of WYDOT has installed an inclinometer, a device that measures slope movement. For now, it relays data a couple of times a day, but once more parts arrive the system will function continuously day and night.
To date, scientists are content with what they are seeing from soil samples taken from several drill holes. That material has been sent to Cheyenne for more in-depth classification.
Time + Money = Permanent Fix
WYDOT busied itself immediately following the reopening of the pass with plans for a long-term fix.
Forget a bridge or extensive realignment of the highway. WYDOT plans at this juncture to simply put the road back where it was.
“It’s really the only idea, without realigning the entire road for miles. That would take forever to do,” Hammond said. “Really, there is nothing preventing us from going back to old alignment. That old fill was the weak link in the whole thing.”
WYDOT administrators were already eyeing the permanent solution when they opted for the tighter inner curve short-term fix. It will allow future work without interruption of traffic.
“That’s a major reason why when we sited the detour where we did. Doing our best to mitigate the steepness and keep it away from the original failure spot,” Hammond said. “Next, we will finish improvement to native fill and hopefully build that two back out to where it was before the failure.”
WYDOT moved some 30,000 cubic yards of fill in shoring up the bypass. A rebuild of the portion of mountain curve that gave way will almost certainly make that look like Tonka truck sandbox play.
It will be a massive undertaking, but WYDOT already pulled off one miracle this summer. It will only take time and money — two things the department never seems to have enough of.
“The money is there,” Hammond assured. “The FHWA (Federal Highway Administration) is in the loop and has cost projections. They are aware of the costs. So, absolutely the money is there.”
And time?
Final plans for a permanent fix should be approved by the end of the month. Contractor bidding on the project closed Tuesday. The department is using a CM/GC type of selection process where a contractor is selected before the work is scoped out.
This unique procedure is a quality-based selection as opposed to a cost-based selection. WYDOT will choose a contractor on a qualifications-based proposal that highlights capabilities, experience and past project history. From there, the contractor will come alongside the department in the decision-making process to better achieve end goals.
Hammond says he thinks his department can have the highway put back like it was, better than it was, by November. And do it with little disruption to everyday traffic.
“That’s the goal,” he added.
Take his word. After all, this is the guy who on June 9 promised, “We got this.” Less than three weeks later, the rubber met the road on that guarantee.
Jake Nichols can be reached at jake@cowboystatedaily.com.
If the Wyoming House and Senate approve its budget changes, then the chambers’ Joint Conference Committee will have helped the University of Wyoming dodge a $40 million cut, while also limiting the Wyoming Business Council to one year’s funding instead of the standard two.
The Joint Conference Committee adopted numerous changes to the state’s two-year budget draft, but didn’t formally advance the document to the House and Senate chambers. The committee meets again Monday and may do so at that time.
Then, the House and Senate can vote on whether to adopt that draft by a simple majority.
First, UW
Starting in January, the Joint Appropriations Committee majority had sought to deny around $20 million in exception requests the University of Wyoming made, while imposing a $40 million cut to the university’s block grant.
That’s about 10% of the state’s grant to UW but a lesser proportion of the school’s overall operating budget.
The Senate sought to restore the $60 million.
The House sought to keep the denials and cuts, ultimately settling on a bargain to cut $20 million, and hinge UW’s retention of the remaining $20 million on its finding and reporting $5 million in savings.
The Joint Conference Committee the House and Senate sent into a Friday meeting to negotiate those two stances chose to fund UW “fully,” Senate Majority Floor Leader Tara Nethercott, R-Cheyenne, told Cowboy State Daily in the state Capitol after the meeting.
But, $10 million of UW’s $40 million block grant won’t reach it until the school charts a “road map” of how it could save $5 million, and reports that to the Joint Appropriations Committee, she added.
“A healthy exercise, I think, for them to participate in, while the Legislature still allows them to receive full grant funding,” Nethercott said.
“I’m hopeful people feel confident the University is fully funded,” she continued, as it’s “on the brink of receiving a new president, having the resources he or she may need to continue to steer the leadership of the University, our state’s flagship school into the future.”
Hours earlier in a press conference, House Speaker Chip Neiman, R-Hulett, said the Legislature has been clear that UW should avoid “diversity, equity, and inclusion” or DEI programming, and that it’s the position of the House majority that the school should tailor its programming to Wyoming’s true business needs – so UW graduates will stay in the state.
Within an earlier draft of the budget sat a footnote blocking money for Wyoming Public Media — a publicly funded media and radio entity funded through UW’s budget.
That footnote is gone from the JCC’s draft, said Nethercott.
Wyoming Business Council
The Wyoming Business Council is set to receive roughly $14 million, confined to one year, for its internal operations, said Nethercott.
“Both chambers have decided to only fund the operations,” Nethercott said, “not all the grant programs.”
She said that’s to compel the Legislature to revisit the concerns it has with the agency, then return in the 2027 legislative session with a vision for its future.
The Business Ready Communities program is “eliminated,” she said.
JCC member Rep. Ken Pendergraft, R-Sheridan, elaborated further.
Of the appropriation, $12 million is from the state’s checking account, plus the state is authorizing WBC to use $157,787 in federal funds and nearly $1 million from other sources.
“We’re going to take it up as an interim topic in appropriations (committee) and how to rebuild it and make it work the way we think it should work,” said Pendergraft. But the JCC opted to fund the Small Business Development Center for two years, along with Economic Diversification Division for Manufacturing Works, and the Wyoming Women’s Business Center, Pendergraft noted, pointing to that language on his draft budget sheet.
Pendergraft made headlines last year by saying he wanted to eliminate the Wyoming Business Council altogether.
But Nethercott told the Senate earlier this month, legislators have complained of that agency her entire nine-year tenure.
She attributed this to what she called communications shortfalls that may not be intentional. She cosponsored a now-stalled bill this year that had sought to adopt a task force to evaluate WBC.
The Wyoming Business Council’s functions range from less controversial, like helping communities build infrastructure, to more controversial, like awarding tax-funded grants to certain businesses on a competitive application process.
Wyoming Public Television
Wyoming Public Television, which is not the same as Wyoming Public Media, is slated to receive the $3 million it lost when Congress defunded the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Nethercott said.
It will also receive its usual $3 million from Wyoming.
The entity will not receive another $3 million it had sought to upgrade its emergency-alert towers, said Nethercott, “because we received information from them… they have another source to pay for the replacement and maintenance of the towers.”
Like the Wyoming Business Council, the Wyoming Public TV’s functions range from less controversial to more controversial.
The entity operates, maintains and staffs emergency alert towers throughout Wyoming.
Wyoming Public TV also produces entertainment and informational movies. Its state grants run through the community colleges’ budget.
State Employees
Nethercott noted that the JCC advanced to both chambers an agreement to pay $111 million from the state’s checking account to give state employees raises.
Those raises would bring them to 2024 market values for their work, she noted.
Because that money is coming from the state’s checking account, or “general fund,” and not its severance tax pool as the House had envisioned, then $111 million won’t impact the $105 million investment another still-viable bill seeking to build an “energy dominance fund” envisions.
That bill, sponsored by Senate President Bo Biteman, R-Ranchester, seeks to lend to large energy-sector projects.
Biteman told Cowboy State Daily in an interview days before the session convened that its purpose is to counteract “green” compacts investors have adopted, and which have bottlenecked energy projects.
Wyoming’s executive branch is currently suing BlackRock and other investors on that same assertion.
Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.
It’s Week 11 in the 2026 Wyoming prep girls’ basketball season. That means it’s the end of the regular season. 3A and 4A schools have their final game or games to determine seeding before the regional tournament, or if a team is locked into a position, one last chance to fine-tune before the postseason. Games are spread across four days.
WYOPREPS WEEK 11 GIRLS BASKETBALL SCHEDULE 2026
Every game on the slate is a conference matchup. Several rivalry contests are part of this week’s schedule, such as East against Central, Cody at Powell, Lyman hosting Mountain View, and Rock Springs at Green River, just to name a few. Here is the Week 11 schedule of varsity games WyoPreps has. All schedules are subject to change. If you see a game missing, please email david@wyopreps.com.
CLASS 4A
Final Score: Laramie 68 Cheyenne South 27 (conference game)
CLASS 3A
Final Score: Lyman 40 Mountain View 26 (conference game)
CLASS 4A
Final Score: Evanston 41 Riverton 39 (conference game)
Final Score: Natrona County 42 Kelly Walsh 38 (conference game) – Peach Basket Classic
Final Score: #4 Thunder Basin 64 Campbell County 32 (conference game)
CLASS 3A
Final Score: #1 Cody 77 Worland 33 (conference game) – 5 different Fillies with a 3, and Hays led the way with 34 points.
Final Score: #2 Lander 49 Lyman 34 (conference game)
Final Score: #4 Wheatland 51 Douglas 40 (conference game)
Final Score: #5 Powell 48 Lovell 42 (conference game)
Final Score: Burns 56 Torrington 43 (conference game)
Final Score: Glenrock 78 Newcastle 30 (conference game)
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WyoPreps Girls Basketball Week 1 Scores 2025-26
CLASS 4A
Rock Springs at #2 Green River, 5:30 p.m. (conference game)
#4 Thunder Basin at #5 Sheridan, 5:30 p.m. (conference game)
#1 Cheyenne East at #3 Cheyenne Central, 6 p.m. (conference game)
Jackson at Star Valley, 6 p.m. (conference game)
CLASS 3A
#3 Pinedale at Mountain View, 4 p.m. (conference game)
#1 Cody at #5 Powell, 5:30 p.m. (conference game)
Buffalo at Glenrock, 5:30 p.m. (conference game)
CLASS 3A
Newcastle at Buffalo, 12:30 p.m. (conference game)
Glenrock at Rawlins, 3 p.m. (conference game)
Torrington at #4 Wheatland, 5:30 p.m. (conference game)
Wyoming Boys 4A Swimming & Diving State Championships 2026
4A Boys State Swim Meet for 2026 in Cheyenne
Gallery Credit: David Settle, WyoPreps.com
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