Highway 40 Mudslide in Kananaskis: What We Saw on the Ground

What’s Happening? Crews are still hard at work clearing up after a mudslide slammed Highway 40 near the Mist Mountain trailhead on August 2. While the road has been cleared, the highway remains closed near the Mount Lipsett area due to lingering slide risks and forecasted rain.

Behind the Barricades. We visited the site on August 4 and spoke with workers on the ground. The slide came down a creek bed just south of the Mist Mountain trail and dumped a 5-foot-high pile of debris across the highway. That’s all been removed now, but engineers are now dealing with 2–3 additional pools of water building up further upslope. Translation: the risk of another slide is still very real.

What Happens Next. Two infrastructure solutions are on the table: either a new bridge or a supersized culvert (think massive pipe) that’ll allow water and debris to flow safely under the highway. Smaller pipes already exist there, but crews say they were no match for the volume of runoff in this event.

Once the area is deemed stable and a construction plan is in place, they’ll reopen the highway to alternating single-lane traffic, likely while the new drainage system is being built.

Can I Still Hike? Yes, just not there. The closure is right before the Lipsett Mountain and Mist Mountain parking lot, so those are off limits. But all trails north of the slide zone remain open, including Elbow Lake, Pocaterra, and Arethusa Cirque. We spotted plenty of cars at all three, and hikers were still out in full force.