{"id":29854,"date":"2024-01-07T23:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-01-08T06:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wolf-creek-pass-to-close-monday-morning-for-avalanche-mitigation\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T01:05:11","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T07:05:11","slug":"wolf-creek-pass-to-close-monday-morning-for-avalanche-mitigation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wolf-creek-pass-to-close-monday-morning-for-avalanche-mitigation\/","title":{"rendered":"Wolf Creek Pass to close Monday morning for avalanche mitigation"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Visibility
Visibility was poor and traction laws were in effect for Wolf Creek Pass, where at least 10 inches of snow fell early Wednesday. (Courtesy of Colorado State Patrol)<\/span>cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Drivers commuting over Wolf Creek Pass Monday morning may want to plan ahead because their trip may be delayed due to avalanche mitigation.<\/p>\n

Following heavy snowfall from Sunday\u2019s storm, the Colorado Department of Transportation will temporarily close an 8-mile stretch of U.S. Highway 160 between Wolf Creek Ski Area near the summit at mile marker 165 to Treasure Falls at mile marker 157.<\/p>\n

The closure will start at 5:30 a.m. and likely take at least two hours, CDOT spokeswoman Lisa Schwantes said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey need to make it to those closure points before 5:30 if they want to get through. If not, they\u2019re going to have to wait a couple hours for sure,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

According to a Snopack Telemetry device located at the Wolf Creek Summit, the area had received roughly 9.2 inches of snow during Sunday\u2019s storm as of 1 p.m. Wolf Creek Ski Area is reporting 24 inches in the last 24 hours as of 3:15 p.m. Sunday.<\/p>\n

Schwantes said the time frame for the mitigation process depends on how much snow the mountain pass receives and the quality of the snow.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf it\u2019s clean snow, they can get it cleared off quickly if it\u2019s dirty with rocks and trees and limbs, and it takes a little while longer,\u201d Schwantes said.<\/p>\n

The Colorado Avalanche Information Center considered Wolf Creek Pass to be in considerable avalanche danger as of Sunday.<\/p>\n

CAIC\u2019s website says heavy snowfall and strong winds will form dangerous slabs of snow 1 to 2 feet thick above various weak snow layers.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhenever we do get large amounts of snow in a short amount of time, that\u2019s when we need to conduct these avalanche safety operations,\u201d Schwantes said.<\/p>\n

The National Weather Service forecast estimates that Durango received 5 to 9 inches from Sunday\u2019s storm. A SNOTEL located at Molas Lake reported it had receive 6.2 inches as of 2 p.m. Sunday.<\/p>\n

tbrown@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

is reporting 24 inches of snow over the last 24 hours<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":29855,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[28,310,1164,69,414,373],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-29854","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-headlines","tag-pagosa-springs","tag-snow","tag-u-s-highway-160","tag-weather","tag-wolf-creek-pass"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29854","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29854"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29854\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":80887,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29854\/revisions\/80887"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29855"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29854"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29854"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29854"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=29854"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}