Utah's High-Elevation Passes Remain Closed, Affecting Spring Adventure Plans
Guardsman Pass is sealed from both Brighton and Park City simultaneously, while Mirror Lake Highway won't reopen until late May at the earliest, reshaping every spring Utah road trip.
Mirror Lake Highway won't carry a vehicle through the Uinta Mountains until late May at the earliest, and that is far from the only bottleneck facing spring road-trippers in Utah right now. UDOT's April 2026 seasonal roads list shows seven state routes still shuttered, each one a critical connector for overlanders and day-trippers who built their itineraries around high-elevation access.
The most share-worthy closure on that list may also be the least obvious: Guardsman Pass appears twice. SR-190, running east from Brighton toward Park City, is closed until further notice. So is SR-224, the parallel designation running from Park City toward Brighton. Both sides of the same pass, sealed simultaneously. Travelers expecting to link a Brighton ski-resort layover with a scenic drive into Park City will find no way through; the drop to I-80 and the Parley's Canyon corridor is the only viable workaround.
SR-39 Monte Cristo, which climbs east out of Ogden to connect Huntsville with Rich County, is also down. UDOT's Ogden Valley office recommends US-89 through Logan Canyon as the primary detour, with the longer SR-16/Wyoming SR-89/I-80/I-84 combination as the backup for travelers trying to reach communities on the far side of the summit. SR-65 East Canyon, the 28-mile corridor linking I-80 near Salt Lake City to I-84 in Henefer, remains blocked as well, pushing traffic onto I-80 through Parley's Canyon. SR-92, the 20-mile Alpine Loop through American Fork Canyon connecting to US-189 at Sundance, rounds out the Wasatch Front closures.
The furthest-reaching loss for backcountry planners is SR-150. The Mirror Lake Highway runs 42 miles from Kamas through the Uinta-Wasatch-Cache National Forest to the Wyoming state line, topping out at 10,715 feet and serving as the primary paved entry point to High Uinta Wilderness trailheads. It reopened May 26 in 2025. In April, no paved alternative reaches that terrain.
SR-153 Mount Holly near Beaver is also out. UDOT's standing guidance: opening dates are conditional on snowpack regardless of any projected timeline, so check the 511 traveler information service the morning of travel rather than trusting prior-year benchmarks.
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