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OPEN
NO TRACTION RESTRICTION POSTED
Last updated at: Nov 4, 9:23 AM MT · UDOT Traffic
Big Cottonwood Canyon is open. Road surface: Dry. Weather: Fair. No traction restriction is posted for this corridor right now.
SR-190 | Cottonwood Heights to Brighton and Solitude
Full camera stripBig Cottonwood Canyon, SR-190, climbs fourteen miles from the Cottonwood Heights bench to Solitude and Brighton. It is the longer, gentler of the two Cottonwood canyons, and on Little Cottonwood closure mornings it becomes the valley's pressure valve, which is exactly when its own limits matter most.
This page leads with the live UDOT verdict, then the canyon's cameras in driving order, the traction posting, current UDOT events, and roadside weather. Big Cottonwood has fewer cameras than its neighbors, eight on the corridor count, so every frame here earns its place.
Canyon mouth (Wasatch Blvd)
Traction enforcement point on storm days, shared with the Little Cottonwood approach.
Storm Mountain
Lower canyon narrows. Rockfall and ice collect on the shaded bends.
Solitude
First resort, roughly two thirds up. The canyon steepens above the village.
Silver Fork
Upper canyon. Watch for ski traffic turning across the road.
Brighton
Top of the road at about 8,730 feet, a loop at the head of the canyon under the Brighton cirque.
| Station | Air | Road surface | Wind |
|---|---|---|---|
| SR-190 @ S-Turns | 38°F | Dry, 38°F | 5 mph SE, gusting 8 |
| SR-190 @ Torpedo Hill | 40°F | Dry, 37°F | 2 mph S, gusting 5 |
| SR-190 @ MP 16 Brighton | 34°F | Damp, 34°F | 3 mph S, gusting 5 |
| SR-190 @ Cardiff | 37°F | Dry, 41°F | 1 mph N, gusting 2 |
Temperatures are Fahrenheit, as UDOT reports them. Data: UDOT Traffic.
roadwork : traffic construction
UDOT is repairing the culvert crossing on SR-190 at the Big Cottonwood Treatment Plant to ensure the culvert continues working effectively and efficiently for years to come.
Data: UDOT Traffic
Search for Big Cottonwood road conditions and, until recently, you found almost nothing built for the purpose: a UDOT page partway down the results and a pile of unrelated pages above it. That emptiness is the opportunity this site exists to take, but it also tells you something true about the canyon. Big Cottonwood draws less storm day attention than Little Cottonwood because its skiing is mellower and its avalanche problem is smaller, not because its road is easy.
The canyon still climbs about 4,100 feet, still runs two lanes with limited passing, and still posts Class 3 traction requirements under the same Cottonwood Canyons rule as SR-210. What it does not have is Little Cottonwood's density of slide paths crossing the road, which is why it stays open through many control work mornings next door. Drivers read that as 'always open', and that is the mistake. Big Cottonwood closes for crashes, for rockfall, for the occasional slide in its upper reaches, and for the simple math of too many cars on a powder Saturday.
UDOT counts the canyon at about 14,454 vehicles on a 2024 peak day, against a road capacity near 1,000 vehicles an hour. A peak day is a full road by arithmetic. The verdict and events list at the top of this page are how you know which kind of day today is.
At the Brighton loop, SR-190 does not quite end. Guardsman Pass Road continues over the ridge and down to Park City, and in summer it is one of the great short drives in the Wasatch: alpine, narrow, and steep, with the Bloods Lake and Lackawaxen trailheads along the top. It is also seasonal in the strict sense. Guardsman is not plowed; it closes with the first lasting snows and opens when the snowpack lets it, sometimes not until late spring, and its status is a UDOT posting, not a date on a calendar.
Treat any map app that routes you over Guardsman in winter as wrong until this page or UDOT says otherwise. Every winter, drivers follow a green line up the Brighton side and meet a snowbank and a gate. The winter route between Big Cottonwood and Park City is back down the canyon and around through Parleys, full stop.
In summer, drive Guardsman with the respect a shelf road deserves: no guardrail on the exposed stretches, cyclists climbing at walking pace, and afternoon thunderstorms that can turn the dirt sections greasy. It appears in the events list here when UDOT posts work or closures on it.
Big Cottonwood is a Class 3 traction segment, same as Little Cottonwood, under Utah Administrative Rule R920-6. When UDOT posts the law here, the requirement is traction devices on at least two drive tires, or all wheel or four wheel drive on M+S or 3PMSF tires with at least 5/32 inch of tread on every tire, and since the 2025 changes it can be posted up to 24 hours ahead of a storm and enforced with citations at the mouth.
The canyon's gentler reputation gets people caught here. A driver turned around at the SR-190 mouth on a Saturday morning has usually made one of two mistakes: assuming all season tires on a two wheel drive car qualify, which they do not when 3PMSF is required, or assuming yesterday's clear posting survives this morning's storm, which postings never promise. Check the verdict on this page on the day, not from memory.
The sticker program matters as much here as next door: one fall inspection at a participating tire shop, and enforcement stops being a conversation. Our traction law page carries the full class table and the live status for both Cottonwood canyons side by side.
Big Cottonwood Creek runs beside SR-190 for most of its length, and the canyon's walls are the steep, fractured kind that shed rock in every season. Freeze and thaw cycles in spring and fall are the worst: water gets into the cracks, freezes overnight, and pushes blocks off the wall onto the road, most often on the shaded bends of the lower canyon around Storm Mountain where the sun arrives last. UDOT sweeps and patrols, but the honest rule is that a clean morning report does not guarantee a clean road at noon after a hard freeze.
Spring runoff writes the other chapter. The creek runs high and fast in May and June, undercutting shoulders in the wettest years and flooding low sections in the biggest. Debris on the road after a hard rain is a standing pattern here, and the events list is where UDOT posts it.
None of this makes the canyon dangerous on an ordinary day. It makes it a canyon, which is to say a place where conditions are local and change by the mile and the hour. That is the entire argument for a page like this one: the mouth frame and the Brighton frame are both on the camera strip, and the drive between them is the story they tell.
Solitude, about two thirds up, is the canyon's quiet first stop: a small village, a loyal local crowd, and terrain that holds snow in the trees when the wind has worked the open bowls elsewhere. Brighton, at the top loop, is the valley's snowboard and night skiing institution, with lights on the lower mountain and the youngest, most local crowd in Utah skiing. The road serves both, plus the Nordic center and the canyon's cabin communities, plus a heavy summer trail load for Donut Falls, Lake Blanche, and the Brighton Lakes.
For drivers, the personality split matters at the margins of the day. Brighton nights mean headlights descending at 9 PM on a road that tourists assume empties at 5. Solitude's smaller lots fill earlier than they look like they should. And both resorts sit close enough to the top that the last three miles of SR-190, the steepest and shadiest, carry nearly all of the canyon's traffic in both directions.
The ski pages on this site cover the drive to each resort specifically: where the traction stop is, which cameras to read, and what the alternatives are when this canyon posts a closure and Little Cottonwood is the backup plan, or the other way around.
The pattern to respect is the substitution surge. When Little Cottonwood closes for avalanche control on a powder morning, thousands of drivers make the same decision at the same time, and Big Cottonwood absorbs them at 1,000 vehicles an hour of real capacity. The canyon does not have to close to fail you; a two hour queue from the mouth is a failed ski day by any honest accounting, and it happens on exactly the mornings that look best on the snow report.
The live comparison page is built for that morning. It puts SR-190 and SR-210 side by side, verdicts, traction postings, and events, so the substitution decision takes ten seconds with real information. Sometimes it tells you Big Cottonwood is flowing and the surge never came. Sometimes it tells you both canyons are posted and Parleys to Park City is the drive that works. Both answers are worth having before the mouth of either canyon.
And when this page's verdict says closed, the canyon means it the same way its neighbor does. There is no local shortcut around a SR-190 closure; the back door over Guardsman is a snowbank until summer. The alternatives are the other corridors, and they are all on this site with live verdicts of their own.
Is Big Cottonwood Canyon open right now?
The verdict at the top of this page is read live from UDOT Traffic, with the current events and any closure UDOT is reporting. If the feed is not connected yet, the page says so plainly instead of guessing.
Do I need chains or AWD in Big Cottonwood today?
Check the traction line in the verdict. SR-190 is a Class 3 traction segment under Rule R920-6, the strictest class: devices on two drive tires, or AWD or 4WD on M+S or 3PMSF tires with 5/32 inch tread. The traction law page has the full table.
Is Guardsman Pass open?
Guardsman Pass, over the top from Brighton to Park City, is seasonal and unplowed. It closes with the first lasting snow and opens when the snowpack clears, by UDOT posting, not by date. In winter the answer is no; check the events list here in late spring.
How many cameras are in Big Cottonwood Canyon?
Eight UDOT cameras on the corridor count, the thinnest coverage in the bundle, all sequenced in driving order on the camera strip page and each with its own page. Fewer cameras makes the roadside weather stations on this page matter more.
Which is better on a storm day, Big or Little Cottonwood?
It depends on the day, which is the point of the live comparison page: both verdicts, both traction postings, side by side. Big Cottonwood closes less often for avalanche work; Little Cottonwood takes the deeper snow. Decide with the live page, not a rule of thumb.