Avalanche Wipes Cars Off Road

Colorado's recent weather woes continued Saturday morning as a wall of snow careened down Stanley Mountain near Berthoud Pass. Two cars carrying a total of eight passengers were thrust off U.S. 40 injuring their occupants and closing the road for a brief time.

Signaled by a small puff of snow, the slide, occurring at approximately 10:30 a.m., slid down a notorious avalanche area known as the Stanley Slide Path. The category 4 avalanche became 15 feet deep and up to 300 feet wide, in certain areas; totally burying the cars it enveloped. The groups were traveling to Winter Park to capitalize on the more than 10 inches of fresh powder produced by a storm from just a few days prior.

As luck would have it, a rescue team, practicing an avalanche procedural drill atop the pass, quickly came to the aid of those trapped in their vehicles. The rescue team further enlisted the help of other motorists, who had already begun the effort to dig them out of the snow.

According to The Associated Press, the occupants of the vehicles, a church group from Ames, Iowa, was taken to St. Anthony Central Hospital in Denver, where all but one of the passengers involved were later released the same day.

Timing played a large part in the survival of those hit, as officials, caught up in the impromptu rescue, insisted that had it come down the mountain just a few hours prior, the incident might not have ended so happily. As it was, the majority of the skiing traffic had already passed through the area, which meant fewer cars to be potentially wiped off the road.

Sunday, artillery shells were used to induce other avalanches out of harm's way and thereby eliminate the potential threat to other travelers on the highway.

The avalanche may have been started as a result of high winds, which reached speeds of up to 100 mph in some areas of the western mountains. The effects of such sustained wind speed, in addition to the potentially deadly avalanche, included whiteout conditions; making some mountain travel even more treacherous. Also, the winds pushed already frigid temperatures far below zero.

The area seemed to have dodged the incredible accumulations of snow; brought about by three consecutive weekly storms. The eastern part of the state received up to 4 feet of snow and was easily the hardest hit area. However, Berthoud Pass' accumulation was up to 10 inches in the past few days, an amount that certainly played a part in Saturdays snow slide.