Yukon's North Klondike Highway has re-opened to the public ... for now
The North Klondike Highway is now open to two-lane traffic around the Dempster Corner (km 666-674), and between the Rock Creek Subdivision and Henderson Corner (km 693-696).
Both sections of highway were temporarily closed late last month due to multiple landslides.
The road was reopened a few days later, but with travel restrictions.
Those restrictions included allowing only one lane of traffic through both zones, with each zone using a pilot car to shuttle vehicles.
Jim Regimbal is the superintendent of the northern area for Yukon's Highways and Public Works department.
"We're just asking people to drive cautiously and be mindful when they're going through those two areas," he told CBC.
Regimbal said the section of road between Rock Creek and Henderson will remain closed from 8 p.m. to 8 a.m. while they assess ongoing safety concerns.
"We want to keep it closed at night because you may hear it but you won't be able to see the landslide coming down in the dark, so until we're able to really get a great idea we probably want a couple more days of no more movement and then we'll open the road 24/7."
Regimbal says despite all of the rain Dawson received over the weekend, there were no additional landslides.
This has enabled crews to focus on further mitigation efforts.
"We will be putting some barriers in place," he said. "The engineers on site have installed some monitoring equipment between those sections to record slope movements and they've recorded little to no movement with the cooling temperatures, so we're really hopeful that the slopes are becoming increasingly stable."
Regimbal said crews will be exploring long term mitigation measures such as barriers to help mitigate the impacts of future landslides at these sites because more slides are inevitable.
"I think we could expect more. It's just the way things are happening in those areas," Regimbal said. "There's not much of a layer there to hold back any of the snow and rain and slides.
"One thing that is kind of nice in our area is that they are slower slides, but still saying they're slower, I don't think I could outrun them, so we're just putting all of the measures in place to keep it safe."
