Predicting and preparing for avalanches that threaten Colorado's US 550 — arguably the most dangerous stretch of highway in the lower 48 states for slides — comes with unique challenges that avalanche forecasters have faced for decades.
Predicting and preparing for avalanches that threaten Colorado's US 550 — arguably the most dangerous stretch of highway in the lower 48 states for slides — comes with unique challenges that avalanche forecasters have faced for decades.
Tragedies, trials behind Colorado's avalanche forecasting program on US 550 With 124 chutes along US 550 — about a fifth of the total 540 paths monitored statewide — CAIC avalanche forecasters stay busy every winter keeping travelers safe as they drive the road, which cuts across the middle of the precipitous slopes, meaning avalanches charge downhill and across the highway at speeds reaching 150 mph and beyond until they’re slowed by level terrain.
On the top of Red Mountain Pass along US 550, snow piled up like a tightening hug on the high-angled slope. About every hour, the icy grip that kept the mile-long East Riverside Slide — historically the area of most concern along the highway — clinging to the side of Abrams Mountain would release, sending tons of snow diving downhill.
The avalanche raced 200 mph down the slope when it hit the men, the newspaper reported. Once it slowed to a dribble, the four coworkers ran to where they had last seen the two men and detected one of their avalanche beacons. They all started to dig. Eighteen hours after the slide, he dug through 20 feet of snow"hard as concrete" and emerged, the newspaper reported. Imel, however, died of hypothermia.This was far from the first fatality along US 550. The East Riverside Slide had stolen the lives of five other people since 1963, all of them before the protective snowshed was built.
These slides were not a surprising or new problem for those familiar with US 550 — people have been forecasting or dealing with avalanches in that corridor since the late 1800s, Greene said — but the losses were still unanticipated and painful. Bachman already had his hands in avalanche work along US 550. In May 1971, INSTAAR had sent him to Silverton on a quest to find a, as he wrote in a paper about the INSTAAR project, “house of suitable size to establish an office and living quarters for a newly funded avalanche research project," which he accomplished. A few days later, he was flying over the highway, noting the details of each avalanche chute.
Arriving in Silverton was a bit of a shock, but he called it"a dream come true" to work under Bachman's leadership. Each day, they would gather weather reports and watch storms develop above them, keeping track of any snow that fell, as well as the wind and temperatures on"green and blue sheets," which he said, laughing, are"viewed as pretty archaic methods now."
In that first season for the forecasters — the winter of 1992 to 1993 — US 550 saw 152 avalanches that crossed the highway. Of those, 87 were natural and 65 were caused by explosives, according to the US Highway 550 Avalanche Reduction Project report. A particularly strong storm Feb. 19 through 24 resulted in 42 avalanches that raced across the road.
"We would sit down and generally have a meeting in the barns and sit down and have real discussions as to what our fears were and what our data was because we had to back up our opinions about shutting the road down with good data," he said. "We’re doing our own weather modeling. We’re doing snowpack modeling. We’re doing tons of research," Greene added.
Avalanche mitigation crews with CDOT in southwest Colorado have other tools at their disposal to knock down a slide too, including case charges placed near the risky area or dropped from a helicopter, an "avalauncher" cannon to fire a trajectory at the slide path, or howitzer artillery guns to shoot ammunition into the slope.
"It's been discussed in the past and we could certainly benefit from extending that snow shed," Schwantes said when asked about it."But at this point, it's not going to be extended."
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