UPDATE 12:12pm March 5 — Colorado State Patrol confirms I-70 from Silverthorne to the tunnels was closed nearly 10 hours. It did not reopen until 4:06 a.m. today. Some travelers were stranded on the tunnel approach for 12+ hours until 2 a.m.
ORIGINAL POST — Fat Tuesday was an unrelenting slog for thousands of drivers stuck in weather and other strange road closures.
It started just after 4 p.m. on the I-70 mountain corridor, when westbound lanes closed near Georgetown. Those lanes would close and reopen at least three times during a prototypical spring storm, when periods of heavy, blinding snow were mixed with brief glimpses of clear sky.
Around the same time stalled semis clogged eastbound I-70 about one mile west of the Eisenhower-Johnson tunnels. Traffic quickly stacked up as more semis spun out on the slush.
Minutes later, on Highway 91 between Copper and Leadville, blowing snow led to a seven-car pileup near the entrance to Mayflower Gulch. Colorado State Patrol confirmed multiple people were hospitalized. Their conditions are unknown this morning.
By 6 p.m., back on eastbound I-70, traffic was stacked up more than six miles to Exit 205 in Silverthorne. Traffic cameras showed a sea of red lights fading into the night and swirling snow.
By 7:30 p.m. CDOT closed Exit 205, but already thousands of vehicles were stranded on the tunnel approach. A listener wrote us on Facebook, saying, “I’ve been stuck eastbound for three-and-a-half hours and gone through almost a quarter tank of gas. I’ve maybe traveled three miles total.”
By 8 p.m. another listener, driving on the reopened westbound lanes, called to report what was clogging eastbound traffic: “More than a dozen big rigs, sideways without chains.”
As our listener crept down the hill to Exit 205, he kept reporting to Krystal 93 DJ Carrie Benefiel: “Eastbound is solid vehicles from the tunnel all the way down, and I now see people driving backwards toward Silverthorne on eastbound lanes. Three vehicles.”
Exit 205 remained closed until 4 a.m., as state patrol and CDOT led stranded travelers through the mess of jackknifed semis.
DUI to bomb threat
Just after midnight, 120 miles away in Weld County, a DUI arrest led to a six-hour closure of U.S. Highway 34.
A state trooper spotted an alleged bomb in the suspect’s vehicle. The suspect implied it was a bomb, forcing the trooper to shut down the highway as a bomb squad investigated.
By 6 a.m. the bomb squad had debunked the suspect’s claim. There was no bomb and the road reopened.