The Colorado Department of Transportation and Colorado Avalanche Information Center will close Colorado 82 between Aspen and Twin Lakes at 4 p.m. Saturday, CDOT said in a news release Thursday night.

Winter weather is forecast to bring high winds and snow to the pass, which reaches 12,095 feet as it crosses the Continental Divide.

Crews will evaluate conditions Tuesday morning to see if the pass can reopen or will start its winter closure, state officials said.

Independence Pass typically closes for the season in late October or early November, with the latest closure in the past decade taking place on Nov. 17, 2017, according to CDOT. The pass usually reopens around Memorial Day.

The pass is Colorado’s highest state highway and is known for epic views of the Sawatch Range and San Isabel and White River national forests — and for winding, narrow roads with steep drop-offs.

The jumper landed roughly 200 feet from a parking area on the mountain pass, at the base of the Grotto Wall climbing area, according to a news release from .

Pitkin County dispatchers received an emergency text reporting the crash landing at about 12:15 p.m. Saturday and sent Mountain Rescue Aspen crews to the Grotto Wall less than 10 minutes later, the news release stated. The area is about 9 miles southeast of Aspen.

Rescue officials reported that the BASE jumper landed in difficult, rocky terrain and required assistance to reach the ambulance.

The 13-person rescue team built a guided-line system to lower the injured jumper from the rocky area to the ambulance, the news release stated.

Information on how the jumper was injured and the severity of the injuries was not available Sunday.

All Mountain Rescue Aspen personnel were out of the field by 3 p.m. Saturday, agency officials said.

Like a lot of the best parts of Colorado, the joys of Independence Pass are short-lived and difficult to reach. But at least it����ap paved, as my mom recently pointed out to me.

With an apex at 12,095 feet above sea level – higher than timberline – the windy road over the pass is only open from June through October each year due to the snow that piles up in the Sawatch mountain range. That means skiers and other visitors coming from the south or the east have to go the long way around if they want to get from Twin Lakes up over the Continental Divide and down into Aspen along State Highway 82 during the winter months.

But in the summer and early fall, it����ap well worth the trip, offering sweeping pine- and aspen-covered views of the mountain range and the valleys below.

Following Lake Creek on the east side and the Roaring Fork River on the west, the dirt road over the pass was originally built in 1882 for gold and silver miners who were chasing fortunes. (About 1,000 people lived in what is now the ghost town of Independence around that time.)

I wasn’t chasing a fortune when I drove over the pass a few weekends ago, though. Rather, I was trying to avoid spending one in Aspen, where the only things more lofty than the scenery are the restaurant and hotel prices. (We camped at Difficult Campground, just outside the town.)

It had been a while since I’d driven it, and memories came back to me of being in the backseat of my parents’ car in the 1970s as they made the journey every year for summer break. The switchbacks, the drop-offs, the narrow curves … the carsickness.

Interstate 70 through Glenwood Canyon was under construction at the time, so the best way to get to town was often along U.S. Route 285 through Fairplay to Buena Vista, and then north to Twin Lakes.

How long ago was that? Well, Highway 82 over Independence Pass wasn’t accessible to cars until the 1920s when “Aspen boosters paid to improve the road to attract automobile tourists,” according to an informational sign that sits above the ghost town.

That means it has been as many years between then and when my parents drove it in the ‘70s as it has between the ‘70s and now. Guard rails were added (thankfully) by the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930s, and the road was finally paved in 1968, according to the sign.

But my mom remembers driving it before that time, and if you think it is treacherous or frightening now, imagine how it was back then. Still beautiful, of course, just a little muddier.

You’ve only got another two months to drive over Independence Pass before it closes for the season this year, so enjoy it while you can.

For decades, the pond in the hamlet of Twin Lakes served as a peaceful lunch spot for travelers, as a wildlife viewing area for locals and as one of the most photographed spots in Colorado. When filled, the pond reflected an old barn and the snowcapped peaks of the Sawatch Range — an image that adorns postcards and tourism websites.

But the pond dried up last year after a developer altered the path of the stream water that filled it.

“All of a sudden, it was not a wonderful place,” said Kurt Schweigert, who has lived in Twin Lakes for nine years. “It was a big ol’ pit of mud.”

When the pond dried, the community organized.

On Sunday, residents gathered to celebrate the restoration of the pond after their collective efforts brought back the water flow. Twenty people — and four dogs — gathered near a new sign marking the creek before touring the water infrastructure put in place to restore the pond.

“Most people would probably look at this and say that the creek and the barn pond are no big deal,” said Rick Akin, who has owned a home in Twin Lakes for 18 years. “But to the people in Twin Lakes, this is a big deal. People were very, very upset about this — and they were just getting run over.”

The pond dried in May 2024 after a developer working on a luxury home community outside the town — — blocked water from flowing down through Twin Lakes.

The developer, Alan Elias, said then that he needed to make the change to meet a legal obligation to measure water flow farther downstream. State water officials declared the change legal, but the residents of Twin Lakes vowed to bring the pond back.

They soon found themselves taking a crash course in Colorado’s complex water allocation system.

“It sounded very simple, but it was not,” Akin said with a chuckle.

Led by Akin and his wife, Jennifer Schubert-Akin, locals founded a nonprofit group, Friends of Berrier Creek. The nonprofit then leased water from Pueblo Water to send down the stream and refill the pond. It also leased water to account for the liquid that would be lost to evaporation off the pond.

The group’s leaders hired a lawyer and a water engineer. They submitted an application for a permit from the Army Corps of Engineers to change the streambed, created a substitute water plan for the state and researched headgates and measuring flumes.

By May, the group was ready to install the hardware that would once again put water in the stream.

Its members took Akin’s canoe trailer to Leadville to pick up the culvert — a long metal tube — and walked it through the short section of woods to the stream. Groups of residents cleared the waterway of willows and debris. Others moved rocks in the stream to make way for the culvert.

Together, they installed the culvert and a measuring flume.

With approval from the state water engineer’s office, residents opened the headgate and started sending water to the pond.

By the first week of June, the pond was full again. Within weeks, the croaking of frogs returned. Geese, too, and swallows that swoop in to feed on the pond’s insects at dusk.

“It was the slap of the beaver tails I missed the most,” said Karen Batista, who has lived across from the pond for 24 years.

In that time, she’s watched people get married at the pond and seen artists set up their easels to paint the scene. The pond makes people slow down and take a moment to appreciate the place, she said.

There’s still more work to be done to make the pond a permanent feature.

The nonprofit must now go to water court and hash out a long-term plan. It will also contest the determination from the state engineer’s office that the waterway is not a natural creek and instead a manmade ditch — which meant that Elias, the developer, had no obligation to allow water to flow there.

Elias has reached out to Akin since the pond has refilled, and Akin wants to try to settle their differences.

“You can’t just have a momentary reaction to this, you gotta draw out a battle plan to get this done,” Akin said.

The status quo also requires maintenance from the coalition of townspeople. Every day, Robert Krehbiel takes a measurement from the flume and reports the current flow to the Division of Water Resources. When he leaves town for a few weeks, he’ll need to find a volunteer to do the work in his place.

Now that the pond is back, Jennifer Schubert-Akin sees visitors once again sitting down on the benches on its perimeter to drink a cup of coffee or eat a snack.

“We have a responsibility to be stewards of this beautiful, historic place, not only for our enjoyment but for the enjoyment of future generations,” she said. “Twin Lakes is one of the crown jewels of Colorado, and we want to do our part to make sure future generations can enjoy this very special place.”

Crews spent about six days clearing Guanella Pass, linking Interstate 70 and U.S. 285 in Clear Creek County, where snow was packed as deep as 5 feet. The county announced the completion of the work Thursday afternoon.

Also on Thursday, the Colorado Department of Transportation reopened Colorado 82 at Independence Pass, which traverses Lake and Pitkin counties near Aspen and Twin Lakes.

Crews with CDOT and the Colorado Avalanche Information Center used explosives to trigger snow slides and cleared snow, ice and debris from the roadway May 12 to mitigate the risk of avalanches, according to

Trail Ridge Road in Rocky Mountain National Park reopening delayed amid snow

Maintenance workers also fixed guardrails, potholes and signs before the opening. Commercial and recreational vehicles 35 feet or longer remain prohibited on Independence Pass because of the curving, narrow layout of the road.

Plow drivers were continuing to battle wind and snow to clear Trail Ridge Road in Rocky Mountain National Park on Thursday night, and the road is expected to remain closed through the weekend, the park wrote in

They’ve settled on a strategy of firing these blasters at night to trigger slides as part of efforts to keep roads across the western half of the state safe and open for trucks, tourists and residents of growing communities.

Bolted and cemented into delicate tundra at elevations up to 12,600 feet, some of these mechanisms ignite propane, oxygen and hydrogen gas in concussive blasts, while others dangle explosives from 30-foot metal towers over slide paths.

The has been firing 54 blasters about 200 times a year to pre-empt natural avalanches. An updated state inventory shows highways, including Interstate 70, running through more than 500 avalanche paths.

The remotely detonated night blasts add to another 400 blasts conducted during the daytime by CDOT crews firing 70-year-old Army howitzer artillery cannons into snow-laden mountainsides, dropping bombs from helicopters and deploying teams of skiers who carry explosives in backpacks.

CDOT’s expansion to install 50 more , pending approvals from the U.S. Forest Service, is being planned to start as soon as this summer along I-70 above the east portals of the Eisenhower-Johnson Memorial Tunnel, where 6.1 million vehicles roll each winter, and then shift to southwestern Colorado along Wolf Creek Pass east of Pagosa Springs and Coal Bank, Molas, and Red Mountain passes north of Durango.

“You see an orange flash and hear a giant boom,” said CDOT avalanche control coordinator Brian Gorsage, whose teams park near blast sites and use smartphones or laptops to detonate explosions.

But the avalanches triggered at night, when traffic is lowest, still often hit roads. This happened on Dec. 30 along Berthoud Pass. Gorsage directs pre-positioned snowplows (CDOT runs a fleet of 876) to clear snow chunks, trees and rock debris as quickly as possible — ideally before sunrise to minimize delays.

CDOT studies estimate a $1.6 million hit to the Colorado economy for every hour that I-70 must be closed for avalanche control, which happened four times in 2024.

Controlling avalanches after snowstorms “is part of life along our high-altitude mountain passes, roads that go up to 11,000 feet. This is the best way forward,” Gorsage said. “Getting everyone going to where they need to go is a super high priority. We are manipulating Mother Nature to protect our transportation system.”

Since the early 1900s, avalanches have killed 16 drivers along Colorado highways, according to Colorado Avalanche Information Center records.

CDOT began an avalanche safety program after state snowplow driver Eddie Imel was killed in March 1992 by . No drivers have been killed in avalanches along highways since then.

But avalanches regularly hit vehicles:

• Last year on Jan. 24, an avalanche on the west side of Berthoud Pass (U.S. 40) hit 10 vehicles and forced 72 hours of closures
• On March 7, 2019, an avalanche that ran 1,000 feet through timber near the Copper Mountain ski area caught four vehicles along Colorado 91, burying a pickup and toppling a Subaru into 12-foot-deep debris
• That month, on I-70 between Frisco and Copper Mountain, an avalanche ripping down a chute on the east side of the highway crossed a creek, sending airborne blasts of snow that blinded drivers and partially buried two cars and forced the closure of I-70

Drivers in each case were able to escape or were extricated without injury.

Beyond roads, avalanches increasingly hit people, mostly backcountry skiers, snowmobilers and snowshoe hikers. The number hit by avalanches has increased to 148 in 2024, up from 53 a decade ago and 45 in 2007, Colorado Avalanche Information Center records show.

Avalanches occur naturally in the Rocky Mountains and play key roles in forest ecology. The Colorado Avalanche Information Center documents about 5,000 a year and estimates nature produces 25,000 to 50,000.

It is getting harder to predict when and where they will hit, CDOT’s chief meteorologist Mike Chapman said.

“We’ve seen an increase in avalanches. We can infer there’s likely some climate change influence there,” Chapman said. A pattern over the past two years, where snow falls early in November followed by several dry weeks, sets up conditions that favor avalanches.

“It’s an abnormal dry start to the winter that weakens the snowpack,” he said. “You put snow on top of it and it slides.”

U.S. Army officials have been urging modernization of avalanche control in Colorado, Utah, Wyoming, California and other western states. Ski areas already deploy computer-controlled blasters, developed in Europe, where civilian use of military weapons is prohibited. CDOT officials have set a goal of becoming “howitzer-free” on I-70 and phasing out the state’s seven howitzers by 2030.

“Especially in southwest Colorado and east of the Eisenhower Tunnel, we’re still using military artillery. These are weapons systems built for war that we are using for civilian public safety. It’s been a very effective program over 50 years, but it’s not the best we can do, in this day and age, using weapons of war for this purpose,” said Ethan Greene, director of the Colorado Avalanche Information Center. “Some systems we’re using are from the Korean War. We’re going to run out of pieces and parts. And the modern artillery systems are too much for what we need — just not a very good fit for what we are doing.”

Colorado began installing remote-control blasters in 2015 above Berthoud Pass, a critical link between Denver and northwestern Colorado, trying to replace unexpected big natural slides with frequent small ones.

Forest Service officials approved the installation of 54 blasters after weighing visual impacts, harm to wildlife and plants, erosion, pollution and damage from construction and summer maintenance of gas hoses and fittings.

CDOT officials are lining up dollars — “tens of millions in capital investments, followed by 5% to 10% of that each year for maintenance,” Gorsage said. Agency officials declined to provide a more specific price tag for the project.

Federal officials still must sign off on installing the 50 additional blasters.

Colorado mountain towns and the ski industry have strongly supported the shift to remote-control blasting at night.

Grand Lake Mayor Steve Kudron, a Colorado resident since 1976, lauded this approach as “miles ahead of what we experienced in the past” when CDOT crews often closed Berthoud Pass.

The 5 a.m. blasts on Dec. 30 to trigger an avalanche that hit the highway required hours of snowplow clearing, but traffic was flowing by 7:25 a.m., Kudron said, and he ferried his in-laws to Denver International Airport in the usual 2.5 hours.

Grand Lake residents are mostly part-timers, second-home owners who rely heavily on easy road access to reach places where they can ride snowmobiles and ski cross-country, Kudron said.

Blasters bolted into the high mountain tundra “don’t quite blend in,” he said. “But we continue to advocate for safer conditions that will let us have fewer and fewer incidents when we cannot get over the pass.”

The freeze is projected to impact 156 temporary seasonal positions across Colorado. Those employees cover a wide range of critical tasks: wildfire prevention and education, campsite management and biological fieldwork as well as trail construction and maintenance.

Local government leaders said the staffing reductions would be felt hard in Colorado’s central mountains, where highly trafficked Forest Service land dominates much of the area and is the center of recreation tourism that fuel economies. Several counties pay to fund seasonal positions, but the hiring freeze means those paid-for positions could remain vacant, putting years-old agreements in jeopardy.

“We’re really concerned,” said Gary Tennenbaum, Pitkin County open space and trails director. “We’d lose pretty significant capacity to manage recreation in the county.”

The hiring freeze, announced by U.S. Forest Service Chief Randy Moore in September, is the result of a potential $500 million budget cut to the agency in the coming fiscal year.

“We just can’t get the same amount of work done with fewer employees,” Moore said in a staff call. “So, in other words, we’re going to do what we can with what we have. We’re not going to try to do everything that is expected of us with less people.”

The Forest Service manages about a fifth of Colorado’s land, including popular recreation areas like , the and the . Some counties, like Pitkin, are primarily made of Forest Service land.

Summit County voters in 2018 passed a property tax increase to pay for critical needs in the community, including wildfire mitigation. Summit County Commissioner Tamara Pogue said the county has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars from that tax increase to pay for Forest Service seasonal crews — . More than 80% of the land in Summit County is managed by the service.

“Six years ago, we recognized already that the USFS was woefully short staffed, and despite the fact that we pay for these positions, they’re about to go away again,” Pogue said.

Impact of shortfall

The Forest Service is operating under a continuing resolution through Dec. 20 while Congress considers a spending bill.

“Given that the agency is operating under a continuing resolution and that we anticipate a budget-limited environment in FY 2025, we are making decisions to plan for such a scenario,” said Donna Nemeth, a spokeswoman for the Rocky Mountain Region of the Forest Service.

The positions frozen locally include three in the regional office. Here are the numbers of positions frozen in each Colorado national forest:

• Grand Mesa, Uncompahgre and Gunnison National Forests: 29
• Rio Grande National Forest: 12
• Arapaho and Roosevelt National Forests and Pawnee National Grassland: 28
• Pike-San Isabel National Forests and Cimarron-Comanche National Grasslands: 31
• San Juan National Forest: 23
• White River National Forest: 30

The cuts will not impact wildland firefighting positions — though the service has also struggled to fill those — but will limit crucial wildfire mitigation work like fuel reduction and the clearing of dead brush. The hiring freeze will also mean fewer people available to make sure campfires are extinguished and to educate campers on fire restrictions and safety.

“They are the fundamental strategies that keep our community safe,” Pogue said, noting that 90% of fires in Summit County begin as campfires improperly extinguished.

“In a pickle”

Like Summit County, Pitkin and Eagle counties also pay for Forest Service seasonal positions. The three counties fund the positions because they are critical to the communities, but the Forest Service does not have the money to do so. Those positions — despite being paid for — are also frozen for the foreseeable future.

Eagle County and towns inside the county spend about $160,000 a year for a crew of between four and eight temporary seasonal workers. The White River National Forest covers a majority of the county and is the most visited national forest in the country, said Marcia Gilles, the county’s open space and natural resources director.

The seasonal employees have conducted patrols in busy areas, helped clean up trash and educated people about how to be stewards of the land. Without Forest Service staff on the ground, Gilles expected more people breaking rules and a higher chance for wildfires.

“It����ap really going to slip backwards a lot,” she said. “The lack of presence on the ground is really going to be felt.”

Eagle County is considering working with youth corps or nonprofits to complete some of the work normally handled by the seasonal employees, Gilles said.

All three counties are working with Forest Service officials to find alternative solutions that could help fill the workforce.

Pitkin County for at least the last four years has provided $125,000 a year to fund three seasonal positions to manage a busy river put-in, motorized recreation on Richmond Ridge and crowds on popular Independence Pass, Tennenbaum said.

“I know they’re in a pickle, but it����ap a tough one,” he said of the Forest Service. “We’re happy to continue the conversations. We just ask they don’t make a unilateral decision.”

The Forest Service will consider exemptions from the freeze, though Nemeth said the bar for one is high.

“We also hope to have more hiring options in the coming year if additional funding becomes available,” she said. “As you see, we are working diligently to ensure that we are able to do this critical work.”

Snow is expected to start falling Monday night and continue through Wednesday, CDOT officials said in an alert. Road crews will reevaluate reopening the highway Wednesday.

The winding mountain highway, also known as Colorado 82, connects Twin Lakes and Aspen and closes for the season every fall. Independence Pass closed for the season on Oct. 30 last year and typically reopens in late May.

Up to 5 inches of snow is possible in the area tonight, according to . An additional 6 inches of snow is possible through Wednesday.

Between 6 a.m. Sunday and 6 p.m. Monday, another 4 to 6 inches of fresh snow could fall on mountain passes above 9,000 feet — including Loveland Pass, Cumberland Pass, Independence Pass, Berthoud Pass, Eisenhower Tunnel and Wolf Creek Pass — .

Areas above 10,000 feet, especially in southwestern Colorado’s San Juan Mountains, could see another 10 to 12 inches of snow Sunday, according to a from NWS.

Since Friday, between 12 and 18 inches of snow have already fallen on the peaks of Colorado’s San Juan Mountains, according to . Lower elevations also saw between 3 and 8 inches of snow during that time.

The Winter Storm Warning will remain in effect through 9 p.m. Sunday for the San Juan Mountains above 8,500 feet.

Snow showers will continue in the mountains Monday morning before coming to a stop in the afternoon, .

In warmer, lower elevations, rain showers and thunderstorms will continue intermittently on Sunday and Monday before drying out on Tuesday, according to NWS forecasters.

Denver will see its rainest weather between 5 a.m. and noon on Monday, NWS forecasters said.

Southwestern Colorado’s San Juan Mountains could see between 1 and 3 feet of snow between Friday and Sunday, according to a . The watch will be in effect from 6 a.m. Friday to noon Sunday.

The heaviest snow is expected to fall in the La Garita Mountains and Eastern San Juan Mountains above 10,000 feet and the storm watch also covers Wolf Creek Pass, North Pass and Cumbres Pass, NWS forecasters said in the alert.

Between 18 and 37 inches of snow are forecast to stack up on Wolf Creek Pass and San Luis Peak in the San Juan Mountains, and the Million Dollar Highway could also see 2 to 3 feet of snow, according to .

Snow originally forecast to start falling in Colorado on Friday could arrive as early as 2 p.m. Thursday and is expected to continue through Sunday afternoon, according to NWS forecasters.

The winter weather will continue in north and central Colorado, especially along mountain passes above 9,000 feet, forecasters said.

In central Colorado’s Park and Summit counties, Hoosier Pass, Fairplay and Alma could see between 4 and 13 inches of snow, .

Near Marble in western Colorado’s Elk Mountains, Schofield Pass is forecast to see between 9 and 15 inches of snowfall this weekend, forecasters said.

The Rocky Mountains will see less snow than other peaks this weekend, with 1 to 13 inches forecast for Cottonwood Pass, Trail Ridge Road and Independence Pass, according to NWS forecasters.

Although NWS forecasters originally said the Denver area would see no snow this weekend, it’s possible the city could get a of less than an inch. Any snow that does fall in the metro area won’t stay long but would be the first snowfall of the season.

Warmer-than-average weather across Colorado has delayed annual snowfalls and NWS forecasters have said the Denver area might not see its first snow until mid-November, nearly a month later than normal.

Over the past 10 years,  has fallen once in September, four times in October, four times in November and once in December, according to NWS data.