The U.S. Forest Service plans to repair and reopen the full length of the road to the Middle Ridge cabin. The road was heavily damaged in a November 2023 landslide, with debris covering the road at four points (shown in the inset). The agency reopened the lower portion of the road last year, with work planned this year on the upper portion.
Forest Service plans to clear and rebuild road to Middle Ridge cabin
By Larry Persily
Sentinel writer
Progress is underway toward reopening the full length of Middle Ridge Road.
Sections of the old logging road were overrun in a November 2023 landslide. The U.S. Forest Service is working to complete repairs to the road and reopen access to the Middle Ridge public-use cabin.
"We were able to secure some emergency relief funding for work on the Middle Ridge Road," Wrangell District Ranger Tory Houser said last week.
The agency contracted out repairs to the lower portion of the road last year, but "the top part where the landslide originated is more complex," she said.
Brett Woodbury's BW Enterprises did the work in 2024.
This year's plan is for a geotechnical analysis of the soil, slope and terrain to provide options for reopening the road, which was covered at four locations by the slide. Last year's work cleared two of those sites, Houser said.
The second phase could include clearing mud and debris dumped by the slide, and maybe widening portions of the roadbed in the slide area and/or building up the slope on one side to stabilize the dirt roadway, she explained.
The road also needs its drainage improved in some areas.
Workers will begin ground analysis work later this spring or summer. Depending on the contractor's recommended action and costs when the job goes out to bid, the road repairs could be done late fall, or maybe not until next spring, Houser said.
"We have what we think is enough" to pay for the analysis, design and road work, depending on the extent and cost of the earthmoving work, she said.
"We will upgrade what we can," but the primary goal is to reopen the road all the way to the cabin. "It's our most popular one," she said of the 16-by-20 log cabin on a small lake, about an 18-mile drive from downtown Wrangell.
Though the road was damaged on the same night as a separate landslide Nov. 20, 2023, that claimed the lives of six people, the Middle Ridge slide had a different starting point. It originated a couple miles inland from the Pats Creek Road turnoff, at about 1,200 feet elevation.
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