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Travelers can expect delays, once again, on both Red Mountain Pass on U.S. Highway 550 and Colorado Highway 145 north of Dolores Tuesday.
Colorado Department of Transportation crews will blast a large boulder that fell on Highway 145 last week around 8:30 a.m. Tuesday, closing the highway near Stoner, approximately 15 miles north of Dolores. Once the initial blast is complete, CDOT expects a wait of 10 to 15 minutes.
Red Mountain Pass between Silverton and Ouray will close at 9 a.m. so that crews can perform mitigation along known slide paths near the highway.
Northbound travel will be blocked by gates 4 miles north of Silverton, near mile post 75, about 2 miles before the Chattanooga curve. Southbound traffic will be blocked 14 miles south of Ouray at the Chattanooga Mine near mile post 79.
The closure, scheduled to begin at 9 a.m., is expected to last through the morning hours, according to CDOT.
The slide paths between the closure points will be mitigated using an Avalauncher, a portable device that launches explosives onto slide paths.
Saturday’s mitigation work, using permanently mounted systems to trigger slides on the north side of the pass, took just over two hours to complete. The length of the closures can depend significantly on whether snow covers the highway and has to be removed.
Areas around the pass received anywhere from 1 to 2 feet of snow from storms that began Friday. That snow fell atop a weak layer of November snow, creating touchy avalanche conditions, according to the Colorado Avalanche Information Center.
Many snow science professionals and members of the public reported signs of instability in the snowpack near Red Mountain Pass over the weekend.
“This particular area is prone to slides crossing the highway so crews are minimizing that risk to make the route safer,” CDOT spokeswoman Adair Christensen said in a message to The Durango Herald.
rschafir@durangoherald.com
