Slow-Moving Glacial Landslide Closes Denali NP's Only Road Through Summer 2022, Possibly Later
The road’s 92-mile route winds up, over and around sheer mountain passes before dead-ending at an old mining community at its westernmost point. When it was built, designers made what seemed like a reasonable assumption that worked for nearly a century: The mountainsides supporting the road would be stable. But it turns out that at one of the road’s most precipitous points, a hidden menace was lurking under the surface. And it has woken up.
Halfway along the route, as the road curls past the steep cliffs and chutes of Polychrome Pass, park scientists have discovered that a rocky glacier lies underneath it. Warming temperatures are accelerating the glacier’s movement downhill, carrying 300 feet of roadbed with it and jeopardizing continued access to some of the park’s key attractions. In August, the slide prompted park managers to close the road just short of the halfway point, forcing lodges on the far side to conduct a costly evacuation and end their summer tourist season early. This week, they announced the closure would continue through the entire summer of 2022. Federal park officials now say they’re analyzing a $53 million plan to bridge the creeping pile of earth, with Congress poised to approve the money.
But for at least the next few years, the slow-moving landslide will interfere with one of Denali’s prized tourist sites. And as continued warming destabilizes other key planks in Alaska’s economy and threatens its infrastructure, the state’s elected leaders continue promoting the oil development that is helping to fuel the problem.
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The Robotic Total Station poised just beyond the weak part of the road at Pretty Rock collects data on the shifting geography of the area. (Ash Adams for The Washington Post)
Alaska ranks as the nation’s fastest-warming state, and it gets roughly one-fourth of its discretionary spending from oil and gas revenue. And as its senior senator, few officials embody this tension more than Lisa Murkowski (R). In an August Facebook post, Murkowski touted her work to secure federal money to fix the landslide. And less than a week later, her campaign scheduled a political fundraiser at the Anchorage home of the top Alaska executive of oil company ConocoPhillips — the state’s top crude oil producer. Murkowski and the rest of Alaska’s congressional delegation have blasted the Biden administration’s moves to block oil development in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and they support expanding drilling in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska through ConocoPhillips’ Willow project.
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2021/10/15/alaskas-most-popular-national-park-climate-change-threatens-only-road-out/
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