A mudslide late Saturday near Arapahoe Basin ski area shut down traffic on U.S. 6 over Loveland Pass which means traffic on Interstate 70 must occasionally stop to allow trucks carrying hazardous materials to pass through Eisenhower-Johnson Memorial Tunnels.
The Colorado Department of Transportation on Sunday evening said the road had reopened.
Heavy rains across Colorado have caused huge debris flows onto highways for the past month, some in areas that are merely steep and others in places where the landscape was scarred by fire last summer.
Heavy rains over the Cameron Peak burn scar in Larimer County over the weekend sent debris flows down that closed Buckhorn Road (aka Larimer County Road 44H) and Larimer County Road 43 between Glen Haven and Drake, and closed Colorado 14 in Poudre Canyon, near where at least three people were killed in a flash flood on July 20.
I-70 through Glenwood Canyon has been closed since Thursday, when about 10 slides, some 12 feet deep and up to 150 feet wide, blocked both lanes of the highway with mud and boulders. CDOT officials said crews had removed 135 truck loads of material from the highway by late Saturday afternoon, but not enough to reopen the highway.
The major east-west highway has been closed multiple times for extended periods of time this summer due to flash flooding in areas burned last year by the Grizzly Creek fire.
CDOT continues to recommend that motorists traveling to or from Colorado’s Western Slope take a route other than I-70. This may add up to 2.5 hours of time to travel.
