JACKSON HOLE, Wyo. — Forest road crews will get to work on Greys River Road soon, giving the popular backcountry access road a freshen.
As soon as the snow melts and surfaces begin to dry out the Bridger-Teton National Forest begins grading several roads on National Forest System lands in Lincoln, Sublette, and Teton counties. One of the larger projects that will occur this summer, is the grading and resurfacing of the Greys River Road near Alpine.
“Road crews are coordinating maintenance and grading activities to coincide with the delivery of additional gravel that will significantly improve the surfacing of the road in its lower reaches,” said Greys River district ranger Justin Laycock.
The BTNF is repairing forest roads in Sublette County this week. Scheduling roadwork, however, is always a flexible business.
“It is weather dependent, and we go where the action is,” said forest engineer Mike Oltman. “Each year looks different and this year the snow melted off of Jackson pretty quickly and we have already done maintenance on Fall Creek Road and Cache Creek in Teton County this spring.”
Setting the schedule annually is not based solely on weather conditions.
“A lot of our road maintenance scheduling is emergency dependent too, and if we have a slump, a slide, or a washout where the road is falling away, we try to move our crews there to address the situation,” Oltman added. “We always mobilize to try to keep access open.”
There are many miles of road on the Bridger-Teton, and every mile isn’t maintained every year.
“We target 300-miles of road maintenance every year, and that doesn’t just mean fixing ruts and potholes,” Oltman said. “Road maintenance consists of a whole suite of activities including everything from blading, to culvert cleaning, adding gravel, sidearm mowing, culvert replacement and ditch reconstruction, so you can’t measure it by trying to say all that needs to be done is scraping 300-miles each year of the 2,000-miles of road on the entire forest,” continued Oltman.
Many of the higher use roads on the forest are regraded in a season, and some road work activities go as far as doing heavy maintenance or something that boarders reconstruction.
“We perform maintenance on the highest priority roads first based upon use, potential environmental impacts and support of forest management objectives. At least some maintenance is required annually on the highest-use roads to prevent conditions from degrading and to protect water and soil resources. In practice, the Forest plans on roads being maintained in one of the maintenance activities described, not just blading, on a 3-5 year cycle.
“We will be grading the Greys River Road a week or so before we apply the new gravel,” said District Ranger Justin Laycock. The $400,000 in gravel and resurfacing material is expected to improve 20-miles of the native-surface Greys River Road. “As soon as we can obtain a firm commitment on the approximate dates of gravel delivery, we can estimate and publicize the road work schedule.”
