JACKSON—Starting this fall, drivers of certain heavy vehicles will be prohibited from driving over Teton Pass unless they complete a new self-certification program, the Wyoming Department of Transportation announced Thursday.
WYDOT plans to launch the WY22 Safe Pass program as early as October, although details about enforcement, public outreach and the certification process are still being developed. The new program comes as Wyoming highway agencies, bereaved families and communities on both sides of the Tetons grapple with repercussions from a series of deadly crashes on the perilous mountain pass traveled daily by thousands of commuters and tourists.
This summer, the fatal crashes have killed three people and sent several others to area hospitals. Public officials and community advocates have responded by pressing the state to impose additional restrictions on large and potentially high-risk vehicles using the steep mountain highway.
Deadly highway
On a recent Sunday morning, the steady hum of traffic winding over Teton Pass carried through the cool air as autumn crept up the mountainsides, turning the aspens bright yellow in September’s waning light. Cars, cyclists, pedestrians and Sprinter vans passed milepost 7, just above Wilson. Along the southeastern edge of Highway 22, a deep gouge of brown earth scarred the mountainside.
In the ditch lay a crumpled Colorado license plate, several blue medical gloves, a pair of Dickies pants and surgical scissors.
Longtime Wilson resident Cindy Campbell held a handmade bouquet of fireweed tied with a blue bow. She had spent an hour walking her property that morning in search of the perfect rock. On it, she painted “J” for Javier in blue, the favorite color of Javier De Luna Chavez, who died there alongside Highway 22 in a Sept. 2 wreck.
“Nick and David received a lot of press,” Campbell said of the July 7 crash that killed Nicholas Besobrasow, 66, of Tetonia, Idaho, and David Page, 57, of Mammoth Lakes, California.
(Bradly J. Boner/Jackson Hole News&Guide)
“And then there was this gentleman, a stranger to this place,” Campbell said, standing at milepost 7. “But we as a community want his family to know that we see him.”
On Sept. 2, De Luna Chavez tucked himself into the back seat of his pickup’s cab to rest while an employee took the wheel. They were hauling landscaping rock from Rexburg, Idaho, to their hometown of Thornton, Colorado.
De Luna Chavez’s wife, Avilene De Luna, said Google Maps routed the men along the shortest available path — over a mountain pass neither had driven before. De Luna Chavez assured his wife he would be home early the next morning.
Shortly before 8 p.m., the Ford F-250 began gaining speed on the eastbound descent toward Wilson.
Avilene said the Life360 app on her phone recorded the truck traveling 102 mph, a speed not independently confirmed by investigators, before it left the highway, struck a ditch and rolled several times.
De Luna Chavez, 41, was thrown through the front windshield, Avilene said. She spoke with the driver shortly after the crash in a desperate attempt to reach her husband. But De Luna Chavez had died at the scene, and the driver was flown to Eastern Idaho Regional Medical Center. He has since been released.
Wyoming Highway Patrol spokesperson Aaron Brown said the crash remains under investigation, but speed is being examined as a contributing factor. He also emphasized the personal responsibility of wearing a seat belt.
“The best preventative tool is yourself,” Brown said. De Luna Chavez was not using a seatbelt at the time of the accident.
Warning drivers
Asked about broader safety concerns on Teton Pass, Brown pointed to the growing number of warnings along the highway and responsibility of drivers to understand the road as the Wyoming Department of Transportation gets ready to install updated signage the week of Sept. 21.
“There are more signs on Teton Pass now, more than ever, but there is only so much you can do. People can read them all they want, but they still need to know how to handle that grade going up and down the pass,” Brown said. “Despite everything, people still make the choices they make.”
For residents and emergency responders repeatedly confronted with the pass’s crashes; however, patience has worn thin.
“From a coroner’s point of view, I’m tired of picking people up on Teton Pass,” Teton County Coroner Brent Blue said after the Sept. 2 crash. “It’s awful.”
“His life mattered,” said Campbell from the side of Highway 22. “And his death matters too.”
As for Avilene De Luna, anger washes over grief.
“There’s a reason it had to be him because there’s nobody that’s going to speak louder and with more determination than this pissed off wife that that pass left,” she said.
App alert
Avilene De Luna was braiding her 5-year-old daughter’s hair at their Colorado home when the Life360 crash alert sounded at 8:04 p.m. on a cellphone. Her 15-year-old son saw his father’s location and began calling him.
“It was a yell of desperation from a 15-year-old,” she said.
By 8:11 p.m., De Luna had placed her two younger children in the car and started driving toward Wyoming. She called law enforcement agencies and hospitals along the route but struggled to learn where her husband had been taken or how badly he was hurt.
“Not knowing is worse than knowing,” she said, remembering that drive through the night.
She had reached Rawlins when a law enforcement officer called her to say someone had died in the crash. Because she had been unable to reach her husband but had spoken with the driver, she said she immediately knew her husband had been killed.
She stopped driving and got a hotel room with her children. Her brother and sisters-in-law drove to Rawlins to bring them home.
A coach, father
Javier De Luna Chavez rarely sat still, his wife said. He operated heavy equipment, serviced cranes, coached youth sports, repaired vehicles and filled his family’s Thornton, Colorado, home with music.
“He never met a stranger,” De Luna said. “I could not walk anywhere in this world and somebody not come up to him and say hi.”
De Luna Chavez grew up in Colorado and was the oldest of four children, with two brothers and a sister. He met his wife nearly 17 years ago through her brother. The couple built a life together raising three children. Friends who needed somewhere to stay could always find a temporary home in the family’s basement, which Avilene De Luna jokingly called the “Sanctuary of Javier.”
De Luna Chavez brought the same determination to his battle with kidney disease. His sister donated the kidney he received during the COVID-19 pandemic. Doctors told him to expect a hospital stay of two or three weeks. Two hours after surgery, his wife said, he ordered a cheeseburger, got out of bed and walked to the bathroom.
“My husband was not a quitter at all,” she said.
After regaining his strength, the couple began traveling as much as possible, visiting London, Italy, Hawaii and exploring much of the contiguous United States. His love of travel eventually helped inspire the couple to start Chingon Hauling. They launched the company about two months before his death. In February, Avilene helped him buy the Ford diesel pickup he had wanted for years.
A vow
She does not blame the driver of the pickup who survived the crash.
“The only thing that I can make here at fault is that pass,” she said.
Her concern extends beyond her family’s loss to the Wilson residents and first responders repeatedly called to crashes along the highway.
“It’s not fair to continue to put these beautiful people in these traumatic situations where they’re having to pick up bodies in their front yard, ” she said. She also pointed to the tourists and out-of-state drivers directed to Teton Pass while trying to experience Wyoming, often without understanding the highway’s steep grades and sharp curves.
“This road is an assassination road and either something is done, or you are going to continue to be called murderers because my husband was murdered by this road,” Avilene said. “This road needs to be fixed. It is not fair to continue to murder people on this road.”
WY22 Safe Pass
Unveiled this week, WYDOT’s new program aims to prohibit drivers of recreational vehicles, motorists towing trailers and operators of vehicles weighing or rated for more than 10,000 pounds from traveling Teton Pass without certification.
“This program is not intended to replace other legal requirements to maintain control of your vehicle,” WYDOT Director Darin Westby said in a news release. “It’s a self-certification process that helps people look at this pass and acknowledge, ‘Yes, I am confident in my equipment and ability to navigate Teton Pass safely.’”
The online certification will require drivers to provide basic information and review educational materials about navigating steep grades, preventing and responding to brake fade, complying with weight and load limits and safely operating vehicles on mountain passes, the release said. It will also provide information about alternate routes for drivers who decide not to take Teton Pass.
Once applicants complete the process, WYDOT will send them a certification letter valid for one year. Drivers will then be required to reapply annually.
All existing regulations, including seasonal closures and the pass’ 60,000-pound weight limit, will remain in effect. While the Safe Pass program would require drivers to review safety information, it would rely on them to certify their own equipment.
This week, Wyoming Highway Patrol conducted a two-day commercial vehicle inspection at the weigh station near the base of Teton Pass, just east of the Idaho state line. The operation was intended to educate commercial drivers and identify safety violations before trucks and trailers began the climb over the roughly 8,400-foot pass.
Recreational vehicles, however, were not required to stop.
Trooper Brad Latchaw said both traffic and crashes on Teton Pass have increased since he began regularly patrolling Wyoming Highway 22 two years ago. Noting the RVs passing the inspection station, Latchaw said Wyoming should consider requiring large noncommercial vehicles to stop for brake and safety inspections, particularly before descending toward Wilson.
Javier De Luna Chavez died near the site of the July 7 crash that killed Besobrasow and Page.
“It’s been more than a month since we lost Nick and Dave on Teton Pass,” said Gary Kofinas, the organizer of the citizen coalition Make Teton Pass Safer. Kofinas acknowledged WYDOT’s efforts to install temporary warnings while the agency produces updated permanent signs but said more could be done immediately.
“Until more substantial measures are implemented, we believe there should be a moratorium on vehicles that present a hazard to the public,” Kofinas said. “That would include semitrailers, vehicles over a certain weight — 40,000 pounds — RVs and fifth-wheel trailers.”
Teton County Prosecutor Dick Stout has filed two misdemeanor counts of homicide by vehicle — following the accident that killed Besobrasow and Page — against Laiton George McMinn, 22, of Ririe, Idaho.
McMinn was driving an asphalt-laden dump truck east toward Wilson on July 7 when its brakes overheated and lost stopping power, according to a probable cause affidavit. McMinn is scheduled to be arraigned in Teton County Circuit Court on Sept. 24.
About a week after the July 7 crash, an RV lost its brakes while traveling toward Wilson. Then on Aug. 17, another RV pulling a trailer crossed the centerline, collided with an oncoming vehicle and struck a rock wall near the base of the pass. The motor home overturned with five family members inside, including an 11-year-old girl who was trapped and struggling to breathe. She has since turned 12 and was recently moved out of the ICU and remains at Children’s Primary Hospital in Salt Lake City.
Six days later, another motor home developed overheated brakes while descending toward Wilson. Its driver pulled over near the runaway truck ramp after smelling the brakes and had the RV towed down the remainder of the pass.
