On Thursday morning, drivers headed to Colorado’s Winter Park Resort along Highway 40 were treated to a special sight, and a bit of a scare, as an avalanche covered both lanes of the highway. Two friends, Sam Staley visiting from out of state, and Don Gallo of Golden, caught it all on their car’s dashcam.
“If we had been closer to the avalanche, if we’d actually been in its path, we would have been submerged,” said Staley. “I think we were really, really lucky. Because this could have been a lot worse, very easily.”
They aren’t the only ones that got lucky, as can be seen in the video, a car coming the opposite direction just barely makes it past the avalanche’s path. No injuries were reported. Staley and Gallo stopped to help shovel snow off the road so traffic could continue, and a Colorado Department of Transportation snowplow arrived shortly after to clean up the rest.
“Even though it’s a road that people travel all the time, and it seems very well-maintained, avalanches are a fact of life here in Colorado,” Gallo said.
And he’s not wrong. With widespread snowfall last week, avalanche danger was high across the state, resulting in two deaths due to two different avalanches in the Colorado backcountry. The first, on Friday, occurred in the Rapid Creek area near Marble, catching three people and killing one. The second occurred on Sunday in the Maroon Bowl area just outside of the Aspen Highlands ski area. That brings the season total of avalanche deaths in Colorado up to nine. Stay safe out there.
