UDOT announced last Friday that in preparation for coming storms, Guardsman Pass would close temporarily. At that time, UDOT estimated the road would open back up that Sunday, depending on weather.
The road never opened and the status was changed to “closed until further notice” on Tuesday after upwards of a foot of snow fell at higher elevations. UDOT’s John Gleason says the road will remain closed until at least this Sunday, but may open up intermittently before the final closure for the winter.
“The fact that it’s at such a high elevation, it sees a lot of snow and is a narrow, winding road, it becomes a safety concern to keep it open when you’re getting that type of weather up there," says Gleason. "At a certain point we make the decision to close it down for the season and we’ll make that determination after this weekend if it’s in everyone’s best interest to open it up again, or if we should just keep it closed for the season.”
There are no winter plowing operations on Guardsman Pass and Gleason says that’s because of how narrow the road gets as it winds from Big Cottonwood Canyon to Park City.
“Once it starts to snow up there continuously, it becomes a safety issue because the road is not wide enough to plow and have traffic moving through on the other side, so we have to take everybody out of the area and make sure that nobody is up there before we begin plowing operations," he says. "It becomes a real issue with time and resources.”
Guardsman Pass closes annually for the winter from roughly October to May.