Hyampom’s One Winter Access Road Crumbles While Residents Worry They’ll Be Trapped

A large chunk of one lane has slipped down the hill. [Crop of a photo  by Jon Mcgarahan]

On March 1st, the Hyampom Road which runs the 22 narrow winding miles from Hayfork began to crumble about a mile outside of the valley. Within a few days, one lane was impassable.

“This is our only road to civilization through winter,” explained Cindy Winter, who lives in the valley and is its representative on the Mountain Valley Unified School District Board. “There are mountains all around.”

Corral Bottom Road and a few others provide alternative routes during warmer weather, noted the Director of Transportation for Trinity County, Rick Tippett. However, he said, “We estimate it would take about a week to plow it out and reopen–get the downed trees out. Five working days.”

And, of course, further snow could close the road again. He estimates that this year it could be June before the road would normally be ready for travel.

The situation worries many residents. Winter reiterated, “We have no other way out…[and the] remaining lane has some cracks.”

Tippett is hesitant to shut the only access road down. “We have to be careful about shutting roads down, sometimes you shut the community down,” he pointed out.

He says he believes that the one lane that is left will likely hold. He explained that it was likely built on an entirely different surface than the lane that crumbled. “In Trinity County, many times when you build a road, you scrape into the hillside and use that to build up the outside.” Thus, he thinks the inside lane is on solid ground that is likely to stay put while the outside was on fill that crumbled. “The road that is remaining is on pretty competent long-lasting soil,” he said.

However, heavy vehicles are being asked to limit their trips and the school bus which normally transports about 10 students over that section will stop before then and parents will need to ferry their children to the bus.

Tippett explained, “You want to exercise a much higher level of care of safety [for a school bus.]”

Other than that he said, “We have not put a weight limit yet.” But his department is encouraging heavy vehicles such as propane trucks to consolidate their trips over the damaged roadway.

Although residents such as Winter are calling for a moratorium on soil truck runs and other heavy vehicles, Tippett isn’t ready to do so. “We are going to monitor [the situation,]” he said.

Meanwhile, Tippett says his department is doing what it can to stem further damage. He said they are covering the exposed soil with plastic and diverting water to “make sure it isn’t get much worse.”

If the road does go out, there are some possible ways to help the residents of Hyampom. “One of the things we can do is create a walking trail above the slide,” Tippett said. This would allow residents to walk a quarter mile or so to the other side where a transit bus would be made available two times per week to ferry them to Hayfork.

At this point though, the road is open for all vehicles except the school bus. Stop signs at both ends are there to ensure one way traffic through to Hyampom

“They have the pie festival this weekend and we still expect full access,” Tippett said.

The 26th Annual Pie Auction and community dinner will still be held at 5:30 p.m., with the pie auction at 7 p.m., Saturday, March 16  at the Hyampom Community Hall.