Back in February, Kodiak saw 2.45 inches of rain in one day, setting a daily record for February 3 according to the National Weather Service.
Two days later the City’s Public Works Department closed the road up Pillar Mountain due to a landslide that caused a section of the access road near the gravel pit to collapse. Since then the road has been closed to all vehicles, but pedestrians have still been able to use the road and access nearby trails.
Interim City Manager Tim Putney said that access on the mountain has always been a focus of public attention.
“There are a lot of people that are pretty passionate about wanting to get up there again, so we decided to just move it up the list and forego some other projects just to kind of get that done," he said.
Mainly public comment has come on social media where residents like Mary Jane Majdic have complained about the lack of access on Pillar Mountain for months. In Majdic’s case, she said her family have been driving up Pillar Mountain for more than four decades, but with vehicle access cut off this summer, she said Elders and community members have been unable to access their berry picking spots for subsistence.
Initially Putney and city staff had told the public via social media on July 19 that the safety and liability risks were too great to reopen the road.
But Putney said the City’s Public Works Department later came up with a solution.
“So we felt by adding a few feet of road on the other side and putting a berm on the damaged side, that we just open the gate so it's passable; put some of our safety concerns at rest," Putney said.
Vehicles can now drive up the road with room for two to pass each other where the landslide took place. But driving on the Pillar Mountain road still poses a risk.
A year and a half ago in February, 2025 a geotechnical engineering firm the city contracted with released a study on the landslide risks of areas around Kodiak. Several portions of the hillsides on Pillar Mountain could turn into a significant landslide according to the study, and as Putney said, the city doesn’t know how stable areas of the road are.
“There's a lot of risk on Pillar," Putney said. "Just, the bedrock is shallow with a lot of the topsoil mixed with that volcanic ash, and you get a, you know, decent amount of rain in a short amount of time, it's liable to cause a landslide.”
Prior to this year, a significant landslide occurred on Pillar Mountain in 1971, significantly impacting Rezanof Drive. That’s according to the landslide risk assessment study, which indicates that the greatest cause of slope failure in the Kodiak area is extreme rainfall.
Still the road is set to remain open for the rest of this summer. The city will continue to monitor the damaged area of Pillar Mountain road and have crews and equipment on standby next time heavy rainfall is in the forecast.
