PIGEON FORGE — Crews working on clearing up and stabilizing the area of a Jan. 25 rockslide are running far ahead of schedule so far, but officials haven’t yet set a new completion date as they keep a leery eye on the weather.

The contractors at the site have already cleared the debris and installed a retaining wall to support the hillside that collapsed into the southbound lanes of the Spur just beyond the Pigeon Forge city limits. While it seems likely they’ll beat both the March 12 deadline to open both lanes of traffic and the April 30 mark for wrapping all work on the project, they’re not yet confident enough to say that’s a certain.

“The work has gone well. We’ve been working a lot of hours,” project superintendent Dale Dockery said Thursday. “Hopefully we’ll be able to wrap it up early.”

Already the workers, who have spent 15 to 18 hour shifts at the site under the emergency contract given to Sevierville’s Charles Blalock & Sons Construction, have cleared the debris, stabilized the rock face and built a 115-foot long, 20-foot high retaining wall. Behind that fortification they have filled the gap between the earth and the wood-and-metal barrier with jagged-cut rock.

On Friday’s chilly morning, crews were using propane heaters to raise the temperature of the air around the rocks to at least 35 degrees, the minimum temperature required for pouring cement, which will fill in the gaps between the stone and further reinforce the wall. The heating effort is another sign of just how hard the contractor is working to exceed the requirements put forth in the $713,909 contract, which offers a bonus of $5,000 per day up to $50,000 for each day before March 12 the road reopens.

“We chose this design because a retaining wall is quick and it can go up in any weather,” Tennessee Department of Transportation (TDOT) geotechnical engineer Saieb Haddad said. “We knew we had to be real quick. We had to choose the right concept.”

Likewise, Dockery said the Blalock workers won’t be discouraged by the frigid temperatures or even this week’s snow in their effort to get the road opened early.

“(The weather) hasn’t been anything we can’t handle,” Dockery said. “Anytime you’ve got a road closed in Sevier County or anywhere, really, it’s hard on the public and it hurts the economy.”

The work the contractor is doing now is part of the first phase of the project. Completing that part of the effort will require the installation of a false rock front to cover the retaining wall at the request of officials with Great Smoky Mountains National Park, who maintain the majority of the Spur.

“They asked that the wall be covered in that way to make it a little more harmonious with the natural surroundings in this area,” TDOT spokeswoman Yvette Martinez said.

The second phase of the project calls for repaving, restriping and other work to recover the roadways from the strain of handling both increased traffic and the heavy equipment used in the effort. During that portion, the contract allows the crews to close one lane of traffic at a time when necessary, though no closures can be done on weekends.

As work progresses on fixing this rockslide, TDOT officials are already keeping a watch on several other areas throughout the county that a state program has identified as potential slide sites. With the freeze and thaw pattern of this winter, and the continuing heavy precipitation, officials with the park service have conceded there is a daily potential for additional collapses.

“There are more areas in Sevier County that have been identified as high slide risk areas,” Haddad said. “We are working to address those. In those areas, the exposed part of the rock is going to weather very quickly and there’s nothing left to hold it up, so it can slide.”