PPL Montana will reopen the road that provides access to its Madison Dam and public recreation areas immediately downstream in the Bear Trap Canyon on Friday (9/10), allowing extended weekend access.

“We continue to make repairs at Madison Dam and work with geologists to further secure the canyon wall,” said David Hoffman, director of External Affairs for PPL Montana. “With the progress we have made this week, we have decided to reopen the road into Bear Trap Canyon for an extended weekend.”

The road will be opened at 7 a.m. Friday and remain open until sunset on Sunday (9/12). The road will close again on Monday (9/13) and Tuesday (9/14) to allow construction equipment to access the dam.

The road will be closed most weekdays to allow construction equipment to access the dam. Information about the status of the road is posted on the PPL Montana website.

“We want to make the canyon as accessible as we can to the public as summer winds down, but we always keep safety in mind first,” Hoffman said.

PPL Montana has completed a 5-foot drawdown of Ennis Lake. The drawdown allowed PPL Montana employees and contractors to place sandbags, weighing up to 3,000 pounds each, on the crest of the dam to seal the leakage around the boulder that fell onto the top of the dam Aug. 30

The repairs at Madison Dam are expected to be completed before the end of the year, and PPL Montana is making plans to refill Ennis Lake, Hoffman said. Damaged equipment on the dam includes three spill gates, walkways and wooden flashboards that sit atop the dam to raise the level of water it is able to hold back.

Madison Dam is a four-unit hydroelectric plant on the Madison River at the head of Bear Trap Canyon about 10 miles north of Ennis. The units have a total generating capacity of 9 megawatts. Madison Dam is 257 feet long and 35 feet high.

PPL has 500 employees in Montana who generate and sell electricity. PPL Montana operates coal-fired power plants at Colstrip and Billings, as well as 11 hydroelectric power plants along Rosebud Creek and the Missouri, Madison, Clark Fork and Flathead rivers. It has a combined generating capacity of about 1,200 megawatts and has offices in Billings, Butte and Helena. PPL EnergyPlus operates a trading floor in Butte that markets and sells power in the wholesale and retail energy market. PPL Montana and PPL EnergyPlus are subsidiaries of PPL Corporation (NYSE: PPL).