Starting Oct. 19, Pitkin County cleared loaded trucks to leave the Elam gravel pit after 7 p.m., run up Smith Hill Way to Highway 82 and continue on to the Aspen/Pitkin County Airport until 7 a.m. The airport says the pit is in Woody Creek, and a 2024 Pitkin County staff memo puts the Elam Sand and Gravel Pit and its asphalt, hot-mix and concrete plant at 7911 Upper River Road.
The runway rebuild down the road will be one of the largest construction jobs the upper valley has seen in years, and a good share of the material for it comes from Woody Creek. Next year, Woody Creek gets the quietest sky it has had in decades and its busiest stretch of construction traffic in the same season. This fall's night hauling is the first test of how those two things will sit together.
What the Pit Is Allowed to Do, Before and After This Fall
The pit's normal permit is modest. The 2024 county memo describes operations from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., plus 10 allowed nights of work, with nighttime loads capped at 40. The memo also notes that the county has stretched those limits before. In 2022, temporary amendments added 10 nights for a CDOT project and raised truck limits first to 60 and then to 80 on specified dates.
This fall goes well beyond that. The Aspen Daily News reported that county commissioners passed an emergency resolution in mid-October for extra night hauling tied to the airport.
| Pit operations | Standing permit | Fall 2026 emergency resolution |
|---|---|---|
| Nighttime operating nights | 10 | 32 |
| Maximum loads per night | 40 | 130 |
| Night hours | Limited to the permitted nights | 7 p.m. to 7 a.m., Oct. 19 to Nov. 24 |
| Night activity allowed | Per existing permit | Loading and hauling only, no crushing or asphalt production |
The new nightly cap is more than three times the old 40-load limit. The resolution also limits what can happen at the pit after dark. Night work is only loading and moving material to the airport. Crushing and asphalt production are excluded, and existing requirements on noise, air quality, traffic control and notice to nearby residents stay in effect. A meeting summary on Citizen Portal lists 72-hour notice to the Woody Creek Caucus among the mitigation terms.
The route is set too. According to the airport's construction updates, trucks go from the pit to the airport by Smith Hill Way and Highway 82.
Why the Gravel Is Moving at Night This Year
The point is stockpiling. The airport says moving material now helps keep the runway project on schedule and cuts down on hauling during daytime traffic hours. That matters because of the schedule that follows.
The airport closure page gives the shutdown as Sunday, April 4, 2027, at 11 p.m. through Friday, November 19, 2027, at 7 p.m. The airport's runway FAQ says there will be no commercial or general aviation operations during that time, and helicopters are excluded too.
The work is a full runway reconstruction. The runway will widen from 100 to 150 feet and shift about 80 feet west to meet FAA standards. New commercial terminal and FBO construction also starts in April 2027. After the runway reopens, commercial flights will use the existing terminal until the new one is finished in 2029.
That leaves about seven and a half months to rebuild a runway. Every load stockpiled this fall is one less load that has to move during that window. The trucks on Smith Hill Way this fall are hauling ahead of next year's deadline.
In 2027, Construction Takes Over From the Planes
During the closure, the planes stop and the construction schedule takes over. At a June work session, Kiewit construction manager Ryan Konen told commissioners how the runway job will run, as the Aspen Daily News reported:
"From a public standpoint, we're working seven days a week, 24/7."
The same report says Kiewit is technically planning six workdays a week, Monday through Saturday, and keeping Sunday as a makeup day. An on-site batch plant will make asphalt from new material and material reused from the current airfield. Its footprint goes on what is now a hayfield, which crews say they will restore when the work is done. Kiewit expects about 150 workers on site in 2027, up from about 80 this year.
With no flights from April to November, the sky over the valley floor goes quiet. The Woody Creek Caucus has already been looking at what flights mean close to the airport. At its Aug. 27 meeting, members discussed Ellen Anderson's brief on ultrafine particulate measurements. Her graph showed what the minutes call "a quite large difference in air quality" between the hours the airport is operating and the hours it is closed.
The same minutes record that the Elam pit asked to work at night for more efficient truck movement because of heavy gravel demand from the airport project. The caucus was also told that "once the airport closes next April they may seek to run the pit 24/7." The minutes add that the caucus had not been notified of any such request.
Nothing on the public record shows an application for round-the-clock pit operations. Elam has said it will come back with something, though. According to the Daily News, an Elam representative told commissioners the company does not plan to run night work past Thanksgiving this year and will return with another request for 2027.
The Rules for 2027 Have Not Been Written Yet
The fall resolution was approved subject to a confirmatory reading. Commissioners scheduled that reading and a public hearing for Nov. 4. The 2027 request will come after this fall's 130-load nights, the no-crushing rule and the notice requirements have had a full season on Woody Creek's roads.
Woody Creek has negotiated with this pit before. A 2006 Aspen Daily News report said the pit had then been running for 24 years, covered almost 50 acres and mined 235,000 cubic feet a year, and that an approved expansion moved that volume to an adjacent site. In 2008, The Aspen Times reported that the caucus was concerned about dump truck traffic at the Smith Hill Way bridge, and planned work at the Smith Hill Way and Highway 82 intersection was described. That story also quoted a caucus member's positive view of Elam as a neighbor. Smith Hill Way, the same road named in the 2008 story, is the haul route again this fall.
The timing matters for anyone who wants to follow it. The caucus's posted schedule lists meetings on the last Thursday of each month at 6:30 p.m. at the Aspen Community School, 1199 Woody Creek Road, with no meetings in November or December. If that schedule holds, the caucus's next regular meeting after Thanksgiving falls in late January. By then, a 2027 request could already be on the county's calendar.
These are the dates on the public record so far:
- Oct. 19 to Nov. 24, 2026: night hauling from the Elam pit, 7 p.m. to 7 a.m., up to 130 loads a night.
- Nov. 4, 2026: confirmatory reading and public hearing on the emergency resolution before the Pitkin County commissioners.
- Thanksgiving 2026: Elam's stated end of night work for the year.
- April 4, 2027, 11 p.m.: the airport closes to all flights.
- Nov. 19, 2027, 7 p.m.: the scheduled reopening.
Before then, a 2027 hauling request from Elam is expected to go before the county commissioners. Its terms are not yet public.
When construction on the valley floor affects your property, how it shows up in a sale, a lease or a seasonal stay depends on details like these. Krista Klees | Palladium Group follows the airport rebuild and the Woody Creek hearings that go with it. Request a private consultation to talk through what the 2027 schedule means for your property on Woody Creek's roads.
