Clear Creek Canyon – The mountainside along U.S. 6 near Golden was silent Friday morning as transportation engineers walked the now-closed roadway, pointing out a rocky outcropping that needed blasting.
Just then, a crackling sound came from above.
“It’s loose! It’s moving!” Russel Cox, a Colorado Department of Transportation project engineer, called out. “Move, move! Keep your heads up. Look up.”
A handful of 3-inch rocks pelted the dirt-covered asphalt like bouncing balls on a gymnasium floor.
Such is life when you’re removing 35,000 cubic yards of rock 100 feet above solid land.
Since a massive slide June 21 initially sent 2,300 cubic yards of rock downhill and closed part of U.S. 6 west of Golden, workers – 20 at a time – have toiled around the clock to blow millions of pounds of additional rock from the mountainside to prevent a bigger, more devastating slide.
The $3 million project initially included removing boulders and shoving 70-foot-long metal rods into the mountain to stabilize it but quickly expanded to massive excavation work after engineers found that a layer of solid rock sat atop unstable, slippery or crumbling rock.
Work on the slide area, including the mountainside near two tunnels, is expected to be completed in mid-September.
“We’re looking at 2,600 truckloads of rock before this is done,” said Tony DeVito, a CDOT engineer helping oversee the project. “It’s not a little job, to say the least.”
At the slide site, dozens of 800-pound to 2,000-pound boulders line one side of the highway. The road’s blacktop is covered with dirt, gravel and fallen rock.
Workers make their way 100 feet above the highway either on foot or by bulldozer using a narrow road.
From there, an explosives expert drops charges in holes drilled into the rock. The blasts fracture the rock, then separate it from the rest of the mountain.
Bulldozers and backhoes then remove the rock in 10-foot chunks, which are sent down the mountain and shipped to a nearby quarry.
As workers above the highway moved a bulldozer early Friday, engineers pulled pieces of rock from the road and crumbled them in their hands.
“Rock! Rock!” a worker overhead called.
Everyone moved.
Staff writer Robert Sanchez can be reached at 303-820-1282 or rsanchez@denverpost.com.
