Four years after becoming impassable, which is saying something for an extreme off-road experience, the Morrison Jeep Trail northwest of Cody reopened to off-road travel last week.
The Shoshone National Forest and the Wyoming State Trails program worked to clear debris from the rugged switchback road leading up to the Beartooth Plateau.
It took several months of heavy machinery and explosives to finish the first phase of the job and reopen the trail for the first time since June 2022.
“It was exceptionally complex work that they had to do,” said Kerry Meador, forest hydrologist with the U.S. Forest Service. “Watching that work happen on this incredibly challenging slope was exceptionally impressive.”
Washed Out
The Morrison Jeep Trail is a 22.5-mile off-road trail that starts at the bottom of the Clarks Fork Canyon up to the Beartooth Plateau. From top to bottom, vehicles rise more than 6,500 feet along 27 switchbacks, many at 60-degree angles.
During the historic floods of June 2022 that shut down Yellowstone National Park, massive rocks and other debris blocked the lower section of the trail. It has been closed since.
The U.S. Forest Service worked with the Bureau of Land Management to secure funding to clear the trail while determining what it would take to accomplish the immense task.
“Casey McQuiston, district ranger of the north zone, started inquiring about partnerships and others who might be able to assist us in getting this open,” Meador said. “That's where the conversation with Wyoming State Trails began.”
Wyoming State Trails joined the effort in July 2025. They spent the next year strategizing how to reopen the Morrison Jeep Trail.
“We signed a good neighbor authority agreement between Shoshone National Forest and the Wyoming State Trails program,” said Wyoming State Trails program manager Forrest Kamminga. “It allowed us to get on the ground and do all the planning and cultural clearances before any shovels were put into the dirt.”
After reviewing the entire trail and every switchback in 2025, the agencies considered hiring a private contractor.
That would have put the project over budget, so they chose a different approach.
They’d do it themselves.
“We decided to utilize the internal skills and expertise amongst our trail crews to get out and get the work done,” Kamminga said. “It was pretty substantial and required a pretty extensive skill set, but that’s what we needed to make sure the work got done.”
Slow Crawl
Work on the trail started in May. It was a slow but effective campaign using heavy machinery and explosives to clear all obstructions.
According to Kamminga, the bulk of the work on each switchback “entailed a lot of blasting.”
“We used drilling and blasting to get a lot of the rock material loosened up,” he said. “That was followed by a skilled excavator operator to clear the material, widen the corners, and just re-establish a lot of the road that was damaged by water.”
Logistics was one of the greatest challenges. The trail is celebrated for its ruggedness, which makes coordinating maintenance and reconstruction difficult.
“We had to figure out how to stage even basic things like how to transport equipment and folks back and forth from the worksite every day,” Meador said. “This is one of those motorized trails where it's not close to a road. You're kind of in the middle of nowhere, and it’s rugged, so the logistics of figuring out how to get this done took some time to plan.”
Nevertheless, the work continued. By September, the lower stretch from the Clarks Fork Canyon to the top of the switchbacks had been cleared.
Less Time, More Miles
The Morrison Jeep Trail officially reopened Friday. That concluded Phase One of the multi-year process.
“This trail begins at the BLM trailhead at the base of the Clarks Fork Canyon, then continues on for about 22 miles on a U.S. Forest Service Road,” Meador said. “There are 5 miles in the lower canyon, about 1.4 of which is the switchback section, and then about 15.6 miles that go from the switchbacks up to the Beartooth Plateau.”
Phase Two will tackle the 15.6 miles to the plateau. That work will be easier, with the switchbacks done, but no less arduous.
Kamminga estimated it’ll take another two construction seasons to finish. That’s partly because they’ll have to wait for things to dry out before they can get to work.
“We're climbing in elevation as we continue with this maintenance and repair work,” Kamminga said. “The higher we go, the longer it's going to take for snow to melt and conditions to allow us to access that higher elevation trail.”
The next season will probably begin in July 2027 and last only two to three months, rather than the five months needed to clear the switchbacks in 2026.
“The high elevation is going to shorten the working construction season significantly,” Kamminga said.
Perpetual Partnership
Future work on the Morrison Jeep Trail will improve the existing route while leaving funds for ongoing maintenance. That’ll ensure off-road enthusiasts won’t have to go another four years without enjoying the popular route into the mountains.
“It is an extremely sought-after experience by the extreme Jeep enthusiasts out there,” Kamminga said. “We got the ball rolling, but we'll be moving from like 4,500 feet in elevation to, hopefully, up to 10,000 feet next year.”
Meador and Kamminga agreed the summer's greatest accomplishment was the effective partnership among the Forest Service, BLM, and Wyoming State Trails. It made the tremendous task that much smoother, even for a rugged mountain trail.
Andrew Rossi can be reached at arossi@cowboystatedaily.com.
