With snow piling up in avalanche chutes on Red Mountain Pass, a three-member helicopter team dropped explosives early Wednesday to prevent the snow from reaching U.S. 550, which snakes over the pass in southwest Colorado.
The avalanche-control work — a cooperative effort of the Colorado Department of Transportation and the Colorado Avalanche Information Center — has taken on added dimensions this winter, as one snowstorm after another has hit Colorado. “This is, by far, in southwest Colorado the busiest we’ve been in decades for avalanche-control work,” CDOT spokeswoman Stacey Stegman said Wednesday.
Although U.S. 550 remains closed due to snow on the pass, Stegman said that it is important for CDOT crews to trigger snowslides in the avalanche chutes before the snow cascades onto the highway. The number of charges dropped from the helicopter depends on the conditions the crew observes. She said that the crew consists of a pilot, a CDOT explosives expert and usually a forecaster from the Colorado Avalanche Information Center.
Howard Pankratz, The Denver Post
