No timeline for reopening Great Allegheny Passage after deadly rockslide, officials say

A portion of the Great Allegheny Passage trail in Fayette County remains closed after a deadly rockslide over the weekend.

The Great Allegheny Passage posted on Facebook that Pennsylvania State Police and the Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources are investigating.

"It's heartbreaking because that is not an area on the trail that I was ever concerned with," said Jen Sigado, a resident and avid biker. "There's a bench right across from where it happened. I sit on the bench almost every day and look at the river. Never once would have thought that particular hillside would go."

In the post, GAP announced there will be a shuttle service to get bikers from one side of the trail to the other in the meantime. The shuttle costs $20.

"I understand them charging money because it's a business, and gas is expensive, and insurance, and everything else," Sigado said. "But to take advantage of such a tragedy when we have hundreds of people on this trail every day. Considering the rockslide fell on Ohiopyle State Park — I used to work for the state. Don't tell me there isn't money to provide a shuttle."

Sigado said she disagrees with making bikers have to pay for a shuttle, especially when bikers can get around it themselves.

"Right up the road, across from Walmart, is Wheeler Bottom," Sigado said. "You can take it straight down. There's a bike trail parking lot, and you get right on the trail there. The way they're going, the shuttle, it's five miles. Now, if they went to the closest one, the turn's a mile and a half up the road, and then a mile back to the trail."

KDKA-TV reached out to the Great Allegheny Passage for comment on the fee but did not hear back.

The DCNR told KDKA-TV on Wednesday that it's in uncharted territory because of the size and volume of the rockslide. A spokesperson said there is no set timeline for when the trail could reopen but stressed it could be a while before it does.

"Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources (DCNR) staff are working with stakeholders, geologists, and engineers to determine the cause of the incident," said Wesley Robinson, the press secretary for the DCNR. "The trail section will remain closed until the necessary excavation work is completed, technical crews have stabilized the area, and the trail is deemed safe for public use.

"DCNR staff are also working with the Great Allegheny Passage Conservancy to help trail users safely detour around the closure. Updates on the closure are available on the Ohiopyle State Park website."

KDKA-TV talked to a professor and the head of the Department of Geosciences at Penn State who said a study will need to be completed to determine if another rockslide could happen.

"Often you'll see, even in really small failures like along a stream bank, or big ones on cliffs, if there are open fractures at the top of the cliff, that's an indication that there's greater potential for failure if those cracks are already there," said professor Eric Kirby.

In KDKA drone video, to the left of the rockslide, what appears to be a visible crack in the hillside can be seen. Kirby said that could be concerning.

"If there's a fracture there, and this thing already failed behind once, if that end is open, and the failure just came off this end, now both ends of the block are no longer connected, so the only thing still holding it in is what's behind in the trees back into the hillside," Kirby said.

As far as what potentially caused the rockslide, Kirby said that's up to a geotechnical engineer on site to determine.

"But from what I can see and judge at, there's a prominent horizontal ledge that is at the base of the cliff where the vegetation then starts above the trail, and it looks like what happened is that the hillside failed behind that and down to it," Kirby said. "That ledge looks to me like what we would call a bedding plane, but one of the old depositional layers in the sedimentary rocks themselves. So probably a weaker layer to begin with, which is why below that point the slope is more just rubbly and holds vegetation, and above that point it's stronger and steeper, right? So, from a standpoint of how these events likely evolve, there could be small rocks and gravel and stuff that comes off where the slide is, as that rock mass adjusts to the fact that this piece just popped off."

Kirby said it's hard to determine if the rockslide was caused by recent weather.

"That's a really hard question because, in a general sense, we do see associations between hillside failures and rain, right? Because as the water percolates in, it can increase the sort of pore pressures, the pressures in the spaces in the soil and the fractures and things, but we don't always know what that threshold is for a failure to happen, and so, the unsatisfying answer is that it's possible, but we couldn't know for sure."

The DCNR said technical crews have stabilized the area but said that section of the trail will remain closed until the investigation is complete.