Avalanche mitigation on Independence Pass involves dropping 42 bombs
What happens when you bring together the state agency responsible for taking care of our roads and the state agency responsible for monitoring avalanches?
If you guessed helicopters dropping bombs on the side of a mountain, you might have heard this one before.
The Colorado Department of Transportation and the Colorado Avalanche Information Center have been working together since 1992, but taking care of Independence Pass between Twin Lakes and Aspen has been a full-time job going back decades. The incredibly popular tourist-traveled road has incredible sights to see on its winding road with steep cliffs on either side of the pass. That's also why CDOT considers it the most dangerous road in Colorado.
A big part of that danger is the avalanche potential. When springtime finally rolls around and the snow on the tall peaks begins to melt, they have the potential to cover the road -- and anyone on it at the time -- in feet of snow.
Hence why Tuesday, crews from both agencies fired up a helicopter and started lobbing what are called "turkey bombs" -- named such because they look a little bit like the size of a turkey you'd cook for Thanksgiving, although one mountain newsroom reporter believes they look more like massive kettlebells for workouts.
Each bomb is thrown at a specific area towards the top of the mountains to intentionally start an avalanche and push as much snow beneath the road as possible, which reduces the chance any will fall later. It's similar to intentionally releasing the seismic pressure along fault lines; all about planning when the disaster happens and controlling the situation the best you can.
Forty-two bombs were chucked out the open door of the helicopter and the slides those explosions created were better than anticipated, which made for some happy ground crews.
"This is pretty remarkable," Brain Gorsage, statewide avalanche coordinator for CDOT, said. "For all the things that had to happen and then getting these awesome results is pretty remarkable."
He's talking about hitting the moving target of weather, crew availability and temperature, as well as snowpack and consistency. Any one of those factors can throw off an operation and make the snow not slide as far, or at all. But today was a good day for slides.
"There's probably 20 feet of debris," Ethan Greene, director of CAIC said, motioning to the snow-covered Highway 82 after a particularly messy slide. "Taller than one of the heavy machinery that CDOT will use to plow it out of the way."
That's the next step, getting the mess they just made cleaned up. They can't use the giant snow blowers either because those avalanches bring down rocks and sometimes trees too, so it will take some time, but they're hoping to have the whole thing cleared and safe for travel by Memorial Day Weekend.