When does Chinook Pass close? As early as October 24

Chinook Pass usually closes for the winter in November, on no fixed date. The Washington State Department of Transportation shuts State Route 410 over the pass, about 45 miles east of Enumclaw, when the first heavy snow of autumn raises the avalanche danger: November 16 is the median date in the state's records, but the same records put three of the four closings from 2022 through 2025 in October, on the 27th in 2022, the 31st in 2024 and the 24th in 2025. It usually reopens in late May. As of October 8, 2026, WSDOT's Chinook Pass report shows it open with no restrictions, and the state has announced no closing date.

Those October dates are new. WSDOT's table of opening and closing dates runs back to 1935, and from then through 2021 it shows three October closings in 87 seasons: 1975, 1994 and 2005. The four seasons from 2022 through 2025 added three more, and the one in 2025, at 10 a.m. on Friday, October 24, is the earliest seasonal closing on the table. The same table holds the opposite record: in the winter of 1976 to 1977, the pass never closed at all.

When does Chinook Pass usually close?

It usually closes in November: of the 90 closings on the table, 72 fall in that month, 12 in December and six in October, by this site's count. The median, the date with half the closings before it and half after, is November 16 across the whole record and about November 10 for the ten years through 2025. The latest closing was December 18, 1974. WSDOT's shorthand has moved with the dates: a 2017 release said the pass typically closes in late November, and releases in 2020 and 2022 said mid-November.

One caution: the table sometimes records the day the gates shut and sometimes the day the state announced they would stay shut. For 2022 it lists October 27 for Chinook, though the agency's release that week said both passes had closed on Tuesday, October 25.

Is Chinook Pass closing earlier than it used to?

From 2022 through 2025 it did, and four years is all the table can say. Nick Bond, writing in 2011 for the state climate office at the University of Washington, charted the closings from 1973 through 2010 and found that "a long-term trend in the closing dates is lacking." Three early autumns since 2022 are not enough to say that has changed. In each, WSDOT pointed to heavy snow: a foot before the 2022 closing, and more than two feet at the summit the weekend after the gates shut in 2024.

Why does Chinook Pass close in winter, and who decides?

Snow and avalanche danger close it, and WSDOT decides when, in coordination with Mount Rainier National Park: the highway crosses the park, and the state maintains it there under an agreement with the Park Service. Its 2025 release gave the grounds: "These roads close each winter because of hazardous conditions such as increased avalanche risk, lack of emergency services and limited snow storage." On Snoqualmie and Stevens passes the agency practices avalanche control all winter, forecasting slides and setting them off with explosives or artillery. It does not attempt that on Chinook, Cayuse or the North Cascades Highway because, its avalanche page says, "avalanche control work in those areas is too hazardous."

A closure comes in two kinds, and the second often grows out of the first. A temporary closure shuts the gates for a storm or a pileup and may be lifted: in 2019 the pass closed on October 19, reopened on the 25th and stayed open until November 21. The seasonal closure is the decision not to reopen. In every year from 2020 through 2024, WSDOT's releases show, the gates shut first and word that they would stay shut came one to four days later. In 2025 the state named the hour a day in advance. In five of the six years from 2020 through 2025, the last day to drive over the pass was known only after it had gone.

Where are the gates, and what stays open from Enumclaw?

The west gate stands at Crystal Mountain Boulevard, milepost 57, about 33 miles east of Enumclaw and 12 miles short of the summit. The east gate is at Morse Creek, milepost 74.5, five miles down the Yakima side, which leaves 17.5 miles of highway shut. The highway from Enumclaw to the west gate is not part of the closure, the ski area turnoff included, and WSDOT posts a winter report for that stretch under the name Crystal to Greenwater. The Enumclaw to Crystal Mountain drive guide covers chains and powder-day traffic. Behind the gate until spring are the White River entrance and the road to Sunrise, Tipsoo Lake and the 5,430-foot summit.

The closed highway is not closed to feet. A 2021 WSDOT release said: "People may go in on foot, skis or snowmobiles for recreation beyond the closed gates, but are advised to use extreme caution as there is often avalanche danger." Inside the park the rule for machines is narrower: as of October 2026 the Park Service permits snowmobiles on the 12 miles of unplowed road from the north boundary to White River Campground and bars them from 410 south of the White River Road turnoff. It also bars parking at the gate and directs visitors to Silver Springs, a 15-space Sno-Park 50 yards up Crystal Mountain Boulevard. A Sno-Park is a winter trailhead lot that requires a state Sno-Park permit: $25 a day or $50 a season as of October 2026, on sale from November 1 (see which pass you need near Enumclaw). In spring, while crews do avalanche work and plow toward the summit, WSDOT asks people to stay out of the closed section.

Is Highway 410 open from Enumclaw to Yakima in winter?

It is not open between the gates. The winter drive from Enumclaw to Yakima goes north to Interstate 90 over Snoqualmie Pass, then down Interstate 82 from Ellensburg: about 145 miles by a routing engine's measure, against about 110 over Chinook. The southern way round, U.S. 12 over White Pass by way of Eatonville and Morton, is about 170. The way to Paradise changes too: with Cayuse Pass shut, the Park Service's year-round entrance is Nisqually, through Ashford.

How is Cayuse Pass different from Chinook Pass?

Cayuse Pass is the junction below the summit, at 4,675 feet, where State Route 123 leaves 410 and runs south through the park toward Packwood and U.S. 12. The two close together: the table gives them the same closing date in 18 of the 20 years through 2025, and in one of the two exceptions, 2022, WSDOT's release had both shutting on the same day. In a full winter closure, 123 is gated down to the park's south boundary, 2.5 miles above U.S. 12. In an October closure its lower end can stay open as far as Stevens Canyon Road until the park shuts that road, which the park's road status page schedules for October 26 in 2026, subject to change. Spring is where the passes part. Cayuse, 755 feet lower, reopened ahead of Chinook in 10 of those 20 years, by a week in 2024, when a washout on the east side of Chinook needed repair and 300 feet of new guardrail.

When does Chinook Pass reopen?

It reopens in late May most years. The median opening date since 1935 is May 25, and WSDOT says it works every year to have both passes open for Memorial Day weekend, a target Chinook met in 15 of the 21 years from 2006 through 2026 by this site's count, May 22, 2026 among them. The date moves because the work does. In 2017, spring storms and snow stacked as much as 40 feet high beside the highway held the opening to June 9. The earliest opening on the table is April 2, 2015, after a mild winter. The latest is July 12, 1974.

Was Chinook Pass ever open in winter?

A federal engineering history says of the highway's first years after the 1932 opening: "The road was closed each winter by snow, as the state made no effort to keep the road plowed." The party came nine months before that opening, on September 13, 1931: a mock wedding of Enumclaw and Yakima at Tipsoo Lake, told elsewhere on this site.

Cayuse Pass was another matter. By the ski historian Lowell Skoog's account, the highway department began plowing up from the north, the Enumclaw side, as far as Cayuse in the late 1930s, and 34,000 people came for winter sports in the 1937 to 1938 season. HistoryLink's history of Cascade skiing has the Enumclaw ski club racing slalom there in January 1938. By the end of the 1950s, Skoog writes, the state was keeping Cayuse open all winter as a through road from Enumclaw to White Pass. He dates the end to 1974, during the oil crisis, for want of traffic, a dozen years after Crystal Mountain opened. WSDOT's Cayuse table begins a year sooner, with a first closing on December 12, 1973.

Then came the winter nobody had to decide. Chinook opened on June 11, 1976, the snowfall that winter was, by Bond's account, extremely low, and the table lists no closing until November 15, 1977, about 17 months later.

Before you go

On the day, open WSDOT's Chinook Pass report first. Outside the November 1 to April 1 reporting season it changes only when something happens. The park's road status page lists both state highways and gives WSDOT's road line as 1-800-695-ROAD (7623). A closing is announced in a WSDOT news release; the table of dates catches up later. The Park Service requires every vehicle in the park to carry tire chains from November 1 to May 1, and commercial vehicles are barred from the park stretch of both highways all year. And from late October on, treat a forecast of heavy mountain snow as a possible last call.