Summer fun is just around the curves
Canyon’s winding U.S. 34 to reopen after months of repairs due to ’13 flood
larimer county» The start of summer comes to Big Thompson Canyon this week in the form of 380,000 cubic yards of blasted rock cleared out over the winter and the road to Estes Park — and the outdoor playground that surrounds it — open once again to the public.
At 4 p.m. Thursday, U.S. 34 west of Loveland will open for the first time since October, when it was closed to all traffic save for canyon residents so that crews could make major repairs to a road severely damaged by historic floods 3K years ago.
The opening of the canyon leading to Rocky Mountain National Park just a day before Memorial Day weekend signifies an unofficial start to summer, of sorts, in Colorado, as residents and visitors put away skis and snowboards and pull out hiking boots, bicycles and fishing rods to take in what the state’s high country has to offer.
“Historically, we’re looking at a fantastic summer season,” Luis Benitez, director of the Colorado Outdoor Recreation Industry Office, said Tuesday. “I don’t see anything out of the ordinary at this point.”
Not that heavy high-elevation snowfall in the past week or so hasn’t made itself felt — the road to the top of Mount Evans will be open only to Summit Lake by Thursday.
“Unfortunately, the entire pass will not be able to open by this weekend,” Colorado Department of Transportation spokeswoman Stacia Sellers said. “Looks like the weather has been cooperating this week, so we might be looking at sometime next week.”
Uncertainty also surrounds the open-
ing of Trail Ridge Road in Rocky Mountain National Park.
“Still too soon to predict whether Trail Ridge Road will open on Friday,” park spokeswoman Kyle Patterson said this week. “We had made a lot of progress and were digging out Alpine Visitor Center, and then the storm hit.”
One of Colorado’s iconic mountain passes that is ready to open at noon Thursday is Independence Pass. CDOT has been working for a month to clear the 12,095-foot pass connecting Aspen and Twin Lakes.
Despite the recent snowfall, all campgrounds at Colorado’s 41 state parks are ready for visitors this weekend.
“All of our campgrounds are open and available,” said Lauren Truitt, a spokeswoman for Colorado Parks and Wildlife. “We do clear our paths and road in our campgrounds.”
There is less availability at campgrounds on U.S. Forest Service land this weekend, as some remain closed because of adverse weather. The website for the Arapaho and Roosevelt national forests lists quite a few camping facilities with delayed openings because of snow.
At Rocky Mountain National Park, four of the park’s five campgrounds are open for business. Three are reservation-only — Glacier Basin, Moraine Park and Aspenglen — and all “are all full for this weekend,” Patterson said.
Many of the people headed to Rocky Mountain National Park undoubtedly will avail themselves of the newly opened road to Estes Park, which will have to undergo one more six-month closure starting this autumn before it is fully repaired.
James Usher, U.S. 34 Big Thompson project director, led a group of reporters and photographers on a tour of the winding, flood-battered road Tuesday, pointing out the work that has gone into fortifying the road after raging waters in 2013 decimated portions of it.
While U.S. 34 was made passable just a few months after the September 2013 floods, CDOT began a permanent overhaul of the steep and windy road last fall so that it will be able to better withstand the next big flood. The feature accomplishment of the $280 million effort will be two new bridges that thread the road through a cut in the hillside to the other side of the Big Thompson River and out of the horseshoe curve, where floodwaters destroyed the road in 2013 and in the deadly 1976 Big Thompson flood.
“The best option for resiliency and cost was to let the river do what it wants and get the road out of the way,” Usher said. “We’re bypassing the problem.”
Workers used a 60-inch bit Tuesday to drill holes into the bedrock for caissons to anchor the dual 300foot-long bridges. They won’t be installed until next winter, when another section of U.S. 34 known as The Narrows will get a soil-cement mix to help strengthen the retaining walls holding in place the road bed.
“Everything that’s erodable, the flood took out,” Usher said.
He pointed to one cut in the road where 60,000 cubic yards — or 6,000 dumptruck loads — had been blasted off the mountainside this past winter to provide more of a passageway for emergency vehicles in the event floodwaters rise again. Over the last half year, 300,000 pounds of explosives have been used to reshape the canyon and make it safer for those who live here and those who pass through.
Even though CDOT hopes to have the reconstruction of U.S. 34 complete by the end of 2018, it doesn’t guarantee that an even worse flood in the future won’t undo some of what is being done today, Usher said.
“Do you know better than Mother Nature?” he said. “The answer is no.”