Boom
There was a large rockslide in Glenwood Canyon early wednesday morning that severely damaged the I-70 interstate causing it to be closed in both directions. There’s a massive hole in the road, which happened to be a bridge so the falling rock went clear through. I made it up to the site on Thursday and by then the debris was broken up and cleared of the road. Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT) is working to patch the many holes in the road in order to open a lane in each direction for traffic.
Today they blew up a vulnerable boulder that was still above on the cliff, waiting to let loose and crush the interstate below. They estimated it to be 2 million pounds. So a CDOT crew spent the day drilling and placing explosives around the boulder to blow it into little pieces to minimize damage. It was a big boom. The delayed shock wave was enough to shake me enough to blur my frame at that exact moment. I like it though.
Every CDOT crew member I talked to seemed very cold and tired. It was snowing pretty hard and conditions were not ideal for hard manual labor outside in a tight canyon. I for one was not expecting snow in the canyon because Aspen, about 45 minutes away, was warm and sunny. Luckily I had some extra clothing in my car but I immediately felt bad for the six man team scaling the snowy cliff above trying to lay explosives. The photo below is of a lone ear-plug in the snow-slush-mud that the road crew had to deal with. Huge thanks to the men working to get the road back open because I leave Aspen in 5 days, and really don’t want to drive the 200 mile detour just to get out of the Roaring Fork Valley.
