On Sunday, Colorado Department of Transportation workers will begin installing these wire-mesh panels in an effort to stop rock from falling.
On Sunday, Colorado Department of Transportation workers will begin installing these wire-mesh panels in an effort to stop rock from falling.Courtesy of Dan Bender

Red Mountain Pass will be closed at least through Monday as the Colorado Department of Transportation continues mitigation of a major rockslide.

Bolts that will hold safety netting in place over the talus field created by the rockslide were anchored Friday, CDOT spokeswoman Nancy Shanks said.

Today, “they’ll go through all the equipment, check the cables, the safety ropes, the workers on the ground, the workers on the slope, the workers in the helicopter,” she said, “and make sure it’s all a well-oiled machine before they start installing the rockfall safety netting Sunday.”

Concern for the workers is paramount, she said.

“We’ve been fortunate that there haven’t been any serious injuries,” Shanks said. “We had one worker hit in the arm by a falling rock, and they were forced to halt the scaling activity (Friday) because of falling rocks.”

The work is complicated by the range in temperatures during a 24-hour period.

“In the morning, the whole area is locked up, or frozen,” Shanks said. “Between 9 a.m. and noon, things start thawing and rocks start falling. It picks up again at 4 p.m. when things start freezing again. They’re finding new debris on the road every morning.”

After the netting is installed, CDOT will assess what needs to be done in the surrounding area, she said, so CDOT is not going to give an exact estimate on when Red Mountain Pass will open.

As of Sunday, the pass will have been closed for two weeks.

In the meantime, drivers hoping to access U.S. Highway 550 north of Silverton will need to travel via Mancos, Dolores, Rico, Lizard Head Pass and Ridgway.

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Alternate route

People who would like to travel north on U.S. Highway 550 from Durango to Ouray and points beyond must take an alternate route until rockfall mitigation work is completed by Colorado Department of Transportation crews near Ouray.
The best route is over Lizard Head Pass on Colorado Highway 145: Go west on U.S. Highway 160 to Mancos (27 miles), turn north on Colorado Highway 184 toward Dolores (17 miles), take Colorado Highway 145 over Lizard Head Pass to just past Placerville (75 miles), and take Colorado Highway 62 east to Ridgway, where it intersects with U.S. Highway 550 (23 miles). (To get to Ouray you must go back south 10 miles on U.S. 550.)
The 143-mile route from Durango to Ridgway will take about three hours under good driving conditions.