National Parks Traveler Podcast · Kurt Repanshek

National Parks Traveler Podcast | Yellowstone's North Entrance

·47 min·3 clips

Maintenance crews and rangers closed both corridors before the roads blew out.

Yellowstone's north entrance is still dealing with the June 13, 2022 flood. A once-in-500-years rainstorm, falling on top of snow cover, sent waters rampaging down the Yellowstone, Lamar, and Gardner rivers. Sections of both the northeast and north entrance roads were damaged. The northeast entrance road was patched relatively quickly, but the north entrance road through Gardner Canyon remains closed to traffic. Vehicles are temporarily using the old Gardner Road, a late 19th century stagecoach route that was brought back quickly for vehicle traffic. Since the flood, the National Park Service has been looking for a permanent route from Gardner, Montana to Mammoth Hot Springs that would avoid going all the way through the Gardner Canyon. Yellowstone Superintendent Cam Sholley joins us today to explain the decision-making that has gone into finding that route. The park is weighing outside alternatives and a hybrid center alignment while factoring in geology, engineering, cost, and visitor access. One concern is the fractured cliff bands above the old north entrance road, where rockfall risk makes an elevated solution hard to trust. Another is cost, since a large structure there could be very expensive and still vulnerable if material breaks loose from above. The point is still to find a practical route, not to pretend the flood left an easy answer.

As heard by us

A careful look at Yellowstone's north entrance and the tradeoffs behind every possible reroute.

Yellowstone's north entrance comes into focus here, with the discussion following the damage from the June 13, 2022 flood and the temporary use of the old Gardner Road to keep traffic moving between Gardner and Mammoth Hot Springs.

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Why you'd press play

When you want the practical case for rerouting Yellowstone's north entrance after the June 2022 flood.

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