CLEAR CREEK COUNTY –Rock slides are just one of the dangers in the mountain corridor. This past week, a rock slide closed Clear Creek County road 308, near Hidden Valley Road. It remains impassable for cars.
“This is rockfall season,” said Matt Morgan, assistant director of the Colorado Geological Survey, which monitors rock slides around the state.
They say timing is everything and for rock slides that timing is now. Geologists say from now through July, rock slides are more prevalent. As Colorado goes through temperature changes, the freeze-thaw cycle makes rock slides more likely.
“The water will infill those cracks and at nighttime, when the temperatures are cold, it’ll freeze and actually wedge the rock apart,” Morgan said. “That’s one of the more common ways we get these big events that cover the roadways.”
Mountain roadways are the most susceptible, mainly because of where they were built. A major rock slide happened during a warm spell this past February and shut down Interstate 70 through Glenwood Canyon for days.
“It’s just one of the hazards, natural hazards of driving through the mountains of Colorado,” Bob Wilson, with CDOT told 9NEWS in February.
That means, for drivers, geologists advise keeping an eye out for smaller rocks on the roads, since they could be a precursor to something more serious.
“We have a steep cliff face and a lot of times, we’ve cut through some of these valleys and cut underneath the rocks and started to maybe unstabilize them a bit,” Morgan said. “If you see rocks ahead of you – just be aware that there could be something up there that’s really unstable.”
A CDOT spokesperson said County Road 308 will remain closed for at least another week. He said the area where the slide happened needs to dry out before crews can start working on it.
For more information on rock slides in Colorado, go to http://bit.ly/1T0Evav
