Snowfall delayed repairs Friday to a section of Interstate 70 where a rockslide sent boulders as big as vans crashing onto the road, but by afternoon, some progress had been made.
One eastbound lane was reopened around 2 p.m. and one westbound lane reopened at 3 p.m.
Significant repairs to the highway will continue over the coming weeks and at this point, there is no estimated time for the highway to completely reopen to all lanes, the Colorado Department of Transportation said.
Road crews, under the glare of portable spotlights, toiled through the night Thursday in hopes of reopening one lane of traffic in each direction. But most of the highway through Glenwood Canyon in western Colorado, near the Hanging Lake rest area, remained closed Friday morning.
CDOT crews are continuing to blast and scale the mountain to bring down loose rock and minimize the potential for additional rocks to slide.
More than three dozen massive boulders landed on Interstate 70 early Thanksgiving Day, some embedded 6 feet deep. State officials ended up closing a 24-mile section of the main east-west artery through Colorado. Crews rerouted traffic that ordinarily flows between Glenwood Springs and Gypsum along an almost 220-mile detour to the north.
Geologists and engineers were working alongside the crews, trying to figure out what caused the slide.
"This is the worst I've seen in my eight years," said Stacey Stegman, spokeswoman for the state transportation department.
Fortunately, no one was injured in the slide, estimated at 100 feet long and 10 feet deep. An overturned truck had forced authorities to temporarily close the interstate earlier Thursday. They were preparing to reopen the road when rocks began rumbling down the canyon walls a mile away.
The slide left holes in the decks of two bridges, damaged guardrails and knocked out two wall panels along westbound lanes of the elevated mountain corridor.
Crews had to blast the biggest boulders with dynamite before they could be scooped up by bulldozers and removed. Crews also used jackhammers to break the larger boulders into more manageable sections.
Diann Allen of Redondo Beach, Calif., was just 30 miles from her destination when she learned she wouldn't be traveling any farther on I-70. She'd been headed to Marble to meet her boyfriend's three college-age sons for the first time.
"Everything was going great until I got here," Allen said outside a Gypsum convenience store. "I guess I'll have leftover turkey. It tastes better anyway."
Highway worker David Kuhn had the unenviable job of informing motorists who had not heard about the slide that they were in for a long detour. He also had to accept -- and help travelers do the same -- the uncertainty of when the road might reopen.
"It could be 10 hours," Kuhn said Thursday. "It could be two days."
Officials say it likely will be days before all the lanes are clear.
Rockslides in this area normally occur in the spring, when alternating cold and warm weather sometimes loosens rocks as the soil contracts and expands.
The detours are as follows: Eastbound traffic can exit at Exit 90 in Rifle, take Colorado 13 to US 40 through Steamboat Springs and take Colorado 131 to Wolcott where drivers can get back on the highway.
Westbound drivers can get off at exit 205 in Silverthorne and take Colorado 9 to U-S 40 and then back down toward the interstate on Colorado 13.
The detours will add at least three to four hours to a trip and winter weather could slow things down even more. Drivers should expect icy, snowpacked roads on Highway 131 from Steamboat Springs to Wolcott and Highway 40 east of Steamboat.
Additional Resources: Copyright 2005 by TheDenverChannel.com. The Associated Press contributed to this report. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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