Hassel Garcia, left, picks up signs along Hyde Park Road on Friday as construction crews get ready for the closure of the road for a repaving project. The road will be open Sundays, and the closed section will gradually reopen until the project’s completion in early October.
From left, Hassel Garcia, Javier Munoz and Manuel Castillo pick up signs scattered along the upper part of Hyde Park Road on Friday as construction crews get ready for a repaving project.
Motorists are stopped by Joel Aguirre along Hyde Park Road Friday, Sept. 6, 2024, where traffic has been held to one lane for the past several months due to utility work. While this work will be done soon, traffic to the peak is about to get worse due to the impending closure of the northern part of Hyde Park Road for a repaving project.
Motorists are stopped by Joel Aguirre along Hyde Park Road Friday, Sept. 6, 2024, where traffic has been held to one lane for the past several months due to utility work. While this work will be done soon, traffic to the peak is about to get worse due to the impending closure of the northern part of Hyde Park Road for a repaving project.
There were few signs Friday afternoon of the impending closure of much of the northern part of Hyde Park Road for a repaving project.
A small stretch south of Ten Thousand Waves has been held to one lane for the past several months due to unrelated utility work. Another short stretch north of the Aspen Vista Picnic Site was down to one-lane briefly — it was already back to two lanes by midafternoon.
Popular campgrounds and hiking areas were bustling with vehicles as people enjoyed the mountain views and pleasant late-summer temperatures.
Starting Monday, all that will be inaccessible six days a week for about a month while a 7-mile stretch of Hyde Park Road, from just north of Hyde Memorial State Park to the top of the mountain, gets new paving, the New Mexico Department of Transportation announced earlier this week.
The road will be open Sundays, and the closed section will gradually reopen until the project’s completion sometime in early October.
From left, Hassel Garcia, Javier Munoz and Manuel Castillo pick up signs scattered along the upper part of Hyde Park Road on Friday as construction crews get ready for a repaving project.
Initially, the closure will mean the Big Tesuque Campground, the Vista Grande Overlook, the Aspen Vista Picnic Site and Trailhead, and Norski, Aspen Basin and Borrego-Bear Wallow trailheads will not be accessible except on Sundays, Santa Fe National Forest spokesman Gabriel Chavez wrote in an email.
“The Hyde Park Road is a significant attraction for fall foliage in northern New Mexico; we have routinely had high visitation in the area at trailheads, day-use areas, and scenic vistas,” Chavez wrote. The national forest “will adjust operations as needed during road construction,” he wrote.
Geoffrey Kitzman of Santa Fe said it’s probably better that the roadwork is being done now, before Ski Santa Fe opens its season Thanksgiving Day. That becomes a busy time when traffic can get backed up on the mountain even without roadwork.
“There’s never a perfect time to do it,” he said, standing next to his vehicle in the Aspen Vista parking lot.
Kitzman said he comes to the area about once a month.
“It’s a beautiful place,” he said. “We’re lucky to have it.”
The first phase of the road project, which Transportation Department officials said in a news release includes “patching and reinforcing of sections of the roadway in preparation for phase two,” started this week.
The $3.5 million project is on schedule, and Phase 2 will start Monday, Transportation Department spokesman James Murray wrote in an email Friday. It is expected to take 30 working days, putting the completion date sometime in early October if all goes according to plan.
“The road is being repaved, which all roads need every so often,” Murray wrote. “While we can and do patch potholes as we find them, eventually we need to remove the existing layer of asphalt and apply a new one. We did the first 9 miles last year.”
Murray said stretches will reopen gradually as work is completed on the lower sections.
“The contractor will be doing the work in sections, ending each section at a place motorists can turn around,” he wrote. “As they finish each section they will reopen it and move the closure to the next section.”
Ski Santa Fe employees “will be allowed access at specified times in the morning and evening to get to and from work,” Murray wrote.
Ski Santa Fe representatives did not respond to requests for comment this week.
Transportation Department spokesperson Kristine Bustos-Mihelcic said the department “was in communication with the ski basin to ensure access for their employees and to provide information on the timeline of the construction. We also will maintain communication with the ski basin, Santa Fe National Forest and Santa Fe County regarding the construction project.”
A Public Service Company of New Mexico project rebuilding a power line a little south of Ten Thousand Waves that started in April will be mostly done when the road is rebuilt, PNM spokesperson Eric Chavez said.
“Milling and paving is the last portion of it,” he said. That should be done by Sept. 13, he said.
After that, Eric Chavez said PNM will still have to do some vegetation management work, which should be completed by mid-October.
Hassel Garcia, left, picks up signs along Hyde Park Road on Friday as construction crews get ready for the closure of the road for a repaving project. The road will be open Sundays, and the closed section will gradually reopen until the project’s completion in early October.
Carl Gervais was returning to his vehicle in the parking lot near the Aspen Basin Campground when he heard about the impending road closure. Part of a hiking group drawn from senior centers in Albuquerque, Gervais is familiar with many of the trails in the Santa Fe and Pecos areas, including the ones off of Hyde Park Road.
“In the summer we like to come here about once or twice a month,” he said.
His favorite hike in the area is the one to Nambé Lake, which starts near the ski basin and which, he said, is one of the toughest hikes his group does. The work might affect their plans — they had planned to hike the Aspen Vista Trail twice in October, and it remains to be seen if the road will be open far enough in time for an early October hike.
The roadwork won’t stop them from enjoying their autumn, Gervais said, even if they have to stick closer to home.
“We’ll be hiking somewhere those days,” Gervais said. “It might not be up here, but we’ll be hiking somewhere.”
