(Dubois, Wyo.) – The Wind River Ranger District of the Shoshone National Forest has reopened three roads which had been closed in June due to multiple slumps. Warm Springs Road (Forest Service Road 532), Burroughs Road (Forest Service Road 510), and Parque Creek Road (Forest Service Road 504) are now open to motorized use, according to a news release issued Tuesday.
Wind River District Ranger Jeff Von Keimast told the county commissioners last month that his district “has had the two worst winters there in his career with a lot of slumps with all the moisture.” The causes, he said, were due to several factors. “We had the fire on Lava Mountain and combined with the beetle kill, the forest is not drinking water any more,” he said. “The issue is getting water off of the roads. It gets saturated from the runoff and it slumps off of the hill.” Von Keimast said the ultimate solution would be a reroute of the Sheridan Creek-Warm Springs Loop since the entire hillside is moving from top to bottom. “That will take a National Environmental Protection Act process (NEPA), so that will take some time. Perhaps we can use some old timber sale roads. We’re looking at that.”
The Ranger also noted that the Brooks Lake Road “is moving below the summer homes with another slump there. We’re getting a geo-technical engineer’s recommendations on how to fix it. I think it will hold as long as it stays dry,” he said, “but we’ll need funding to design and fix it and we don’t have that now.”
In other news on his district, Von Keimast told the commissioners that cattle are now on the forest allotments now, but that one allotment, in the DuNoir area, has been given back to the forest by the Diamond G. Ranch. “We’ll use it as a forest reserve until we need it for another reason.
For more information on these roads, please contact the Wind River District Office at 307-455-2466