SALT LAKE CITY — A semi-truck veered off eastbound Interstate 80 at the mouth of Parleys Canyon on Friday evening and fell more than 50 feet, critically injuring its driver and forcing the closure of every eastbound lane at Salt Lake City's main canyon gateway, Utah television outlets reported.
Source: KSL News
FOX 13 News Utah reported that the semitruck fell over 50 feet into the canyon at the mouth of Parleys, and KSL reported the driver was critically injured after the truck veered off the eastbound road. No other vehicle was described as involved in the accounts published by Saturday, and officials had not publicly named the driver or announced a cause.
Source: FOX 13 News Utah
The closure at the canyon mouth
The Utah Department of Transportation closed eastbound I-80 at the mouth of Parleys Canyon, near milepost 128, where its own traffic cameras showed emergency vehicles across the wet eastbound lanes on Friday evening and traffic backed up in the area. UDOT's first travel alert said there was no estimated time for reopening and told drivers to avoid the area.
Source: Utah Department of Transportation (UDOT) travel alert
In its official alert, UDOT said drivers could not reach eastbound I-80 from three directions: from southbound Foothill Drive, from the ramp connecting westbound I-80 to southbound I-215 East, and from northbound I-215 East. With the canyon mouth shut, eastbound traffic out of Salt Lake City had no way onto the interstate at its busiest eastern gateway.
UDOT later set an initial estimated clearance time of 7:58 p.m. on Saturday, October 31 — almost a full day after the Friday-evening crash — an indication of how heavy the recovery work was expected to be, with a wrecked semi lying more than 50 feet below the roadway.
Source: KUTV, reporting UDOT
Why this stretch matters to truckers
Parleys Canyon is the steep mountain corridor that carries I-80 east out of Salt Lake City toward Park City and the Wyoming state line. I-80 is one of the main coast-to-coast freight routes in the United States, and the canyon climb is a daily run for long-haul truckers — including many Punjabi drivers who work the western interstates. A full eastbound closure at the canyon mouth does not just delay city traffic; it stops freight at the bottom of the grade with no short way around.
Officials had not announced why the semi left the road, had not named the driver, and had not given a later update on the driver's condition beyond KSL's report of critical injuries. UDOT's camera images showed wet pavement at the scene on Friday evening; no agency had attributed the crash to weather.
What happens next
The work ahead is the recovery of the truck from below the roadway, the reopening of the eastbound lanes once UDOT judges the canyon mouth safe, and the official investigation into how the semi came to leave the interstate. Drivers heading east from Salt Lake City were advised by UDOT to avoid the area and check its traffic updates before travelling, and anyone planning the I-80 run toward Park City or Wyoming should expect the closure — and its clearance estimate — to keep changing until the lanes reopen.