Almost a year after Queenstown’s council closed the iconic Skippers Bridge, there is still no update on when — or if — it will reopen.

But load testing it is out of the question, with an engineering firm warning that action alone could cause a “catastrophic cable failure”.

Council initially closed the bridge — a Heritage New Zealand category 1 historic place — last October following an annual safety inspection.

In January it announced it would be closed indefinitely after engineering investigations confirmed severe wire failures in the suspension cables.

In a statement at that time, property and infrastructure acting GM Roger Davidson said the future of the 125-year-old bridge, which at 91.4m above the Shotover River is the highest suspension bridge in NZ, would be considered by elected members through the annual planning process and prioritised against other district investments.

A Stantec report from December last year says due to “extensive brittle failures” of the wires in the bridge cables, believed to have been caused by stress erosion cracking, they couldn’t confirm the load capacity of cables.

“Load testing runs the risk of causing a catastrophic cable failure,” the report says.

Stantec considers there are three options available to council — to use the above-ground part of existing cables and fix them into new or extended anchor blocks, which will be complex and require helicopters for access; to replace the cables, which is more complex than using the existing ones; or to abandon the bridge and construct a new, shorter, lower bridge in the original 1890 location, about 300m downstream.

There are, however, issues relating to other parts of the bridge structure.

They include the 120-year-old towers being unlikely to have “sufficient capacity to resist a current design-level earthquake”, the existing site unlikely to be suitable for a bridge designed to current standards, and a “significant active slip” immediately beside the true left cable anchorage.

An update published on council’s website following January’s closure says the “high-level options” require further investigation and development before they can be properly costed and presented in full for a decision by council’s elected members.

A council spokesperson this week confirms there is, as yet, no update on that, and no timeframe for one.

tracey.roxburgh@scene.co.nz