Wyoming
[PHOTOS] Construction Work Progress at Teton Pass, WY, After Emergency Road Work Contract is Awarded – SnowBrains

The Wyoming Transportation Commission awarded a $880,600 emergency bid to Avail Valley Construction LLC during a special meeting on Thursday afternoon, June 13. During the Zoom meeting, Avail Valley shared its plan for the repair work at Teton Pass, which suffered a catastrophic failure on Saturday, June 8, causing almost an entire section of the road near milepost 12.8 to slide into the ravine below. Teton Pass Road, also known as Wyoming Highway 22, links Wyoming and Idaho, and is the main access road from the south to Jackson Hole.
Trouble first emerged on Thursday, June 6, when a large crack stretching across both lanes of the highway was spotted. This prompted a temporary closure and emergency patching by the Wyoming Department of Transportation (WYDOT). However, the situation rapidly deteriorated on Friday, June 7, when a mudslide covered the road, forcing another closure. As crews worked overnight to construct a detour around the damaged section, the landslide continued to move, ultimately causing the catastrophic failure and collapse of the roadway. Thankfully, no employees, contractors or other members of the public were injured in the collapse. No equipment or buildings were lost or destroyed in the collapse either.
Teton Pass also experienced a mudslide at milepost 15.5, which is not related to the 12.8 milepost slide, referred to by WYDOT as the “Big Fill” slide. The slide was discovered June 7.
Avail Valley is based out of Victor, Idaho, and is licensed in Wyoming and Idaho. The company specializes in all types of construction, including commercial, residential, and municipal projects. Avail Valley will construct a box culvert at the slide area at mile marker 15.5. The culvert will help improve drainage in the area. Crews with Avail Valley are aiming to have the project complete so the highway will be ready to reopen once the detour is complete at the Big Fill landslide located at mile marker 12.8 on Teton Pass.
The progress photos from the last two days are incredible as crews are working hard to get this vital road access back open for the summer holidays. Teton Pass sees an Annual Average Daily Traffic (AADT) of almost 10,000 vehicles per day in certain locations along the pass. Summer highs can reach 15,000 vehicles.
Please note, Yellowstone National Park and Grand Teton National Park remain open for visitors during this time.


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Wyoming
Wyoming High School Basketball 2A State Tournament 2026
The 2-time defending champ Tongue River girls, along with both teams from Big Horn will represent Sheridan County in the small school version of March Madness.
Click here to see results from the regional tournaments.
2A Boys:
First Round:
Thursday, March 5th: (All games played at Casper College)
(#2E) Big Horn vs. (#3W) Shoshoni – Noon
(#1W) Thermopolis vs. (#4E) Sundance – 1:30pm
(#2W) Wyoming Indian vs. (#3E) Wright – 6:30pm
(#1E) Pine Bluffs vs. (#4W) Rocky Mountain – 8pm
Friday, March 6th: (All games played at Ford Wyoming Center)
Consolation Round:
Big Horn/Shoshoni loser vs. Thermopolis/Sundance loser – Noon LOSER OUT!
Wyoming Indian/Wright loser vs. Pine Bluffs/Rocky Mountain loser – 1:30pm LOSER OUT!
Semi-Finals:
Big Horn/Shoshoni winner vs. Thermopolis/Sundance winner – 6:30pm
Wyoming Indian/Wright winner vs. Pine Bluffs/Rocky Mountain winner – 8pm
Saturday, March 7th:
Friday Noon winner vs. Friday 1:30pm – Noon at Ford Wyoming Center Consolation Championship
Friday 6:30pm loser vs. Friday 8pm loser – 3pm at Natrona County High School 3rd Place
Friday 6:30pm winner vs. Friday 8pm winner – 7pm at Ford Wyoming Center Championship
2A Girls:
First Round:
Thursday, March 5th: (All games played at Casper College)
(#2W) Wyoming Indian vs. (#3E) Big Horn – 9am
(#1E) Sundance vs. (#4W) Shoshoni – 10:30am
(#2E) Tongue River vs. (#3W) Greybull – 3:30pm
(#1W) Thermopolis vs. (#4E) Pine Bluffs – 5pm
Friday, March 6th: (All games played at Ford Wyoming Center)
Consolation Round:
Wyoming Indian/Big Horn loser vs. Sundance/Shoshoni loser – 9am LOSER OUT!
Tongue River/Greybull loser vs. Thermopolis/Pine Bluffs loser – 10:30am LOSER OUT!
Semi-Finals:
Wyoming Indian/Big Horn winner vs. Sundance/Shoshoni winner – 3:30pm
Tongue River/Greybull loser vs. Thermopolis/Pine Bluffs loser – 5pm
Saturday, March 7th:
Friday 9am winner vs. Friday 10:30am winner – 9am at Ford Wyoming Center Consolation Championship
Friday 3:30pm loser vs. Friday 5pm loser – 10:30am at Ford Wyoming Center 3rd Place
Friday 3:30pm winner vs. Friday 5pm winner – 5:30pm at Ford Wyoming Center Championship
Wyoming
Wyoming Crow Hunters Can Blast All They Want, But Nobody Eats The Birds
Mention of bird hunting might conjure up images of hunters and their dogs huddling in freezing duck blinds or pounding the brush in hopes of kicking up pheasants. But crow hunting is a thing in Wyoming too.
“It’s about the sport of it,” Dan Kinneman of Riverton told Cowboy State Daily.
He started crow hunting when he was 14 and is about to turn 85. He’s never tried cooking and eating crows or known anybody who has.
Instead, shooting crows is essentially nuisance bird control, as they’re known to wreak havoc on agricultural crops.
“All the ranchers will let you hunt crows. I’ve never been refused access to hunt crows. They all hate them,” he said.
In Wyoming, crow hunting season runs from Nov. 1 to Feb. 28. No license is required, and there’s no bag limit. Hunters can shoot all the crows they want to.
It’s a ball for hunting dogs too, Kinneman said.
“My yellow Labrador retriever, he doesn’t care whether it’s a crow or duck. In fact, he likes crow hunting more than duck hunting, because there’s more action,” he said.
Don’t Expect It To Be Easy
Kinneman said that in the days of his youth, crow hunting was as simple as driving around and “shooting them out of trees with rifles.”
However, as the number of people and buildings potentially in the paths of bullets grew, such practices fell out of favor. Crow hunting became more regulated.
And it evolved to resemble hunting other birds, such as waterfowl.
Meaning, hunters started setting out decoys, hiding in blinds and using calls to tempt crows to within shotgun range.
Kinneman is no stranger to hunting of all types. He’s taken numerous species of big game in Wyoming and elsewhere. And in July 2005, he shot a prairie dog near Rock Springs from well over a mile away.
He hit the prairie dog from 2,157 yards away. A mile is 1,760 yards.
But bird hunting has always been his favorite.
“It’s my life,” he said.
He has a huge collection of duck, goose and dove decoys. And two tubs full of crow decoys.
The uninitiated might think that going out and blasting crows would be a slam dunk.
That isn’t so, Kinneman said. He likes crow hunting for the challenge of it.
“Hunting crows is hard. They are a lot smarter than ducks and geese,” he said.
Pick Up After Yourself
Even though he doesn’t eat crows, Kinneman said he never just left them littering the ground where he shot them.
“I never let them lay out there. I always picked them up and disposed of the carcasses,” he said.
That’s good ethics and it shows respect for the ranchers, he said.
“Leaving them (dead crows) out there would be no different than just leaving all of your empty shotgun shells out there,” he said.
“You have to pick up after yourself, or the ranchers won’t let you back onto their land,” he added.
Slow Year
At his age, Kinneman isn’t sure how much longer he’ll be able to get out crow hunting. And this year has been a total bust.
“I love doing it. But this year there are no crows,” he said.
The Riverton area is along major crow migration routes.
Picking a good hunting spot is a matter of “finding a flyway” that the crows are on and then setting up a spread of decoys and a blind along the route.
But with an unusually warm winter, the crow flyways have been practically empty, he said.
Migrations Are Off Everywhere
Avid birdwatcher Lucas Fralick of Laramie said that warm, dry conditions much of this winter have knocked bird migrations out of whack.
“I do know that because of the weather, migrations are off all over the place,” he said.
One of his favorite species is the dark-eyed junco, a “small, sparrow-like bird,” he said.
They usually winter in the Laramie area and leave right around March. This year, they were gone by November, he said.
“They’re a cold-weather bird,” he said.
Mark Heinz can be reached at mark@cowboystatedaily.com.
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