3 feet of snow falls on Evergreen, Colorado hotel doesn't turn people away after reaching capacity
It was a long day of sleeping off, digging out, or staying home for people in Colorado's Evergreen area which was hit by heavy snow that continued to fall Thursday night.
"I was telling him it's probably the worst I've seen it because normally I can get out with four-wheel drive or a Subaru, but this time no," said Chris Palmer, who was walking with his son Chance to a gasoline station to tank up their snowblower. "We're not getting out. Not today."
Snow totals in Evergreen were running about 32 inches officially, but there were measurements reaching toward 40 inches as people surveyed their totals.
At the Comfort Suites near El Rancho they didn't turn people away when they reached capacity.
"People were just crashing here in the lobby and just kind of hung out. There's nowhere to go, nowhere for them to drive to," said worker Shelly Hackbarth. "Absolutely felt really bad for them."
The shutdown of Interstate 70 Wednesday night changed a lot of plans.
"We were supposed to head up to Winter Park. And this is about as far as we saw ourselves going," said Ryan Lendrum of Fort Collins as he tried to clear his truck off so he and his wife and young children could head to Winter Park as planned.
Makena Englund of Boulder was hosting friends from Pomona College in California for a planned ski trip. Six of them ended up piling into one room at the hotel after they ran into trouble heading uphill on I-70.
"So I thought we'd be able to get a four-wheel drive sturdy vehicle and then we got a two wheel drive minivan," she said. "We initially pulled over to the Home Depot to get like chains for the car, but they didn't have chains. But then we struggled because the defroster thing wasn't working. But then it was a whole survival mission to cross the street to come here."
A weary looking Dyer family from Houston had a rough night trying to make it from Beaver Creek to Denver to fly home. They'd never seen snow like this storm.
"No absolutely not. And honestly it was terrifying to drive in. We got to a stopping point, I was mentally exhausted," said mom Ashley Dyer.
"We got completely stuck in Idaho Springs. So we slept in the car. That was an experience. All four of us," she said.
