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The Oregon Department of Transportation is working to shore up an unstable slope on Oregon Route 99E after a heavy basalt rock slide Wednesday closed the road to traffic in both directions south of Oregon City.

The highway will remain closed at least through today, as teams decide what course of action must be taken to stabilize the slope, said Brad Wurfel, an ODOT spokesman.

“They started to do the cleanup yesterday, but as they had geologists and crews checking that slope they found a bunch of other areas that they want to do scaling work on,” Wurfel said today. “It’s possible that we’ll have to take a great deal of material off of that section.”

In order to reopen the road while work is still under way, workers could install concrete barriers on the northbound lanes of the highway and split the southbound lanes to one lane each for northbound and southbound traffic, Wurfel said.

The unstable area, near mile marker 13, could take a while to clear up, he added.

The basalt rock is cracked in several places above the highway. Water is pooling on top of the slope and tree roots are spreading into the cracks, making it more unstable, he added.

“This is less than optimal,” Wurfel said.

Basalt tends to fall in big angular pieces, as well, which makes it dangerous for traffic.

鈥淲hen it goes it won’t be a small flow 鈥� it moves in large chunks,鈥� Wurfel said. 鈥淭hey’re going to take a real hard look at that entire section.鈥�

It’s possible the roadway was also damaged by the chunks, which could call for some repaving. Weekend forecasts of cold weather could prevent that from happening for a while, he said.

鈥淭hat’s hard to do with low temperatures,鈥� Wurfel said.