Two main roads on Mount Charleston remain closed as cleanup continues

Six weeks after the remnants of Tropical Storm Hilary ravaged Mount Charleston, the mountain is still fraught with potential hazards, and one of its subdivisions still has no running water. While two of its three main roads are expected to be fixed this week, the mountain will remain closed to all except residents and construction and emergency workers.

Construction and debris removal are ongoing, as are efforts to get running water back to the 80 homes in the Old Town subdivision.

“The three highways on the mountain are interconnected for emergency response to the entire area,” Clark County spokesperson Stacey Welling said in an email. “It’s critical to complete repairs to all of them before any can be safely reopened, and agencies are working hard to accomplish that before winter sets in.”

Infrastructure damage on the mountain was caused by heavy rain associated with the remnants of Tropical Storm Hilary in August, when 8 inches fell on Kyle and Lee canyons. The water took large sections of asphalt out of the roads, with the Nevada Department of Transportation identifying 43 sections of heavy road damage.

About 50 percent of the repair work needed to be done to restore water service to Old Town is complete, said Bronson Mack, outreach manager for the Las Vegas Valley Water District. The estimated timeline for restoring water service back to those customers is the end of November, he said.

“Depending on how things progress, we may be able to shorten that timeline a little bit,” Mack said.

The residents are using bottled water, and there is a tank of potable water in the neighborhood. Laundry and sanitary facilities are available at the Retreat on Charleston Peak hotel, according to an update posted Monday on the Las Vegas Valley Water District’s website.

Mack said the Old Town residents have been “extremely patient in understanding the challenges.” In about the 20 years he has been working in the water industry in Las Vegas, he said it’s the longest water service outage that he can recall.

Some repairs completed

Roadwork also continues, according to a statement issued Tuesday by the agencies involved in the recovery efforts, including Clark County, the U.S. Forest Service and NDOT.

Repair work on state Route 156, also known as Lee Canyon Road, is complete, while the work on state Route 157, also known as Kyle Canyon Road, is expected to be done this week.

State Route 158, also known as Deer Creek Road, which connects Kyle Canyon and Lee Canyon roads, was also badly damaged. Construction on that road — still closed because of the “extreme hazards” — is expected to start next week. That’s expected to be completed by winter, officials said in the statement.

State Route 158 is also a “key route for snowplow operations during the winter,” Welling said.

“While significant progress has been made on highway repairs, there continues to be active work going on in other areas,” Welling said in an email. “There is a lot of equipment coming and going, lots of materials being hauled and intermittent lane closures to accommodate work crews.”

‘Horrible shape’

Mountain resident Jimmy Alderson, known on the social media site X as Mt Charleston Mountain Man, has been posting photos of the damage. He was asked if the situation on the mountain was still too hazardous to reopen to visitors.

“It really is,” Alderson said in text messages. He described the trails as being in “horrible shape.” Alderson also said that the meadows, the large flat area of land in Lee Canyon that is used for picnics in the summer and sledding in the winter, is “still full of debris, and no movement has been made to clean that up yet.”

A fire official also expressed concern about the potential safety hazards on the mountain.

“NDOT, the Las Vegas Valley Water District and other agencies have made tremendous progress on making repairs on the mountain, but there is still a lot of heavy equipment coming and going as work and debris removal activities continue,” said Fire Chief Jorge Gonzalez, of the Mount Charleston Fire Protection District, in the statement.

“We also have serious concerns about people getting injured if they attempt to hike or recreate on closed areas within the forest because of the damage,” Gonzalez added.

Meanwhile, Mount Charleston also saw its first snow of the season, with a trace amount falling on the mountain on Sunday night and early Monday, according to Matt Woods, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service’s Las Vegas forecast office. The record for the earliest measurable snow of the year was set on Oct. 3, 1986, Woods said.

“They reported a trace of snow, just a little bit on the ground, but not enough to be measurable,” Woods said.

Alderson also posted a photo of a tape measure and a fresh batch of accumulated snow on Lee Canyon measuring 2 inches, among other photos of the snow’s accumulation.

2” of snow ❄️ on October 1st got me like: pic.twitter.com/NdNhcgCZly

— Mt Charleston Mountain Man (@mountainman_mc) October 2, 2023

Woods said that Alderson probably saw more snow up in Lee Canyon because it’s a higher elevation, as compared with the official National Weather Service observer that recorded the trace amount at the Mount Charleston fire station. For a weather record to be considered and confirmed, it would have to be recorded by an official weather observer, Woods said.

Contact Brett Clarkson at bclarkson@reviewjournal.com.