In southwest Colorado, US 550 is an important artery that crosses the very rugged San Juan mountains..."The Switzerland of Colorado". These mountains get clobbered with about 250 inches of snow (21 feet) in the winter, the majority of it comes in March and April. And they're steep and jagged...tend to frequently shed snow in monster avalanches. My newspaper had a front page story today on the incredible avalanche danger the plow drivers face in keeping this highway open across no less than three steep 11,000 passes. In the summer this highway will get your attention big time...in the winter it's downright dangerous.
I've personally yet to see a large avalanche actually run but I have seen the aftermath of some...acres of huge trees just broken like matchsticks and piled up with tons of rocks, dirt and ice. Last March, Interstate 70 got hit with two big ones about 40 miles west of Denver...working 24 hours a day with lots of heavy machinery, it took CDOT about 4 days to get the 500 foot wide, 50 foot deep pile of debris from
each of the slides off the road. Avalanches are very, very scary monsters.
http://www.gazette.com/popupNews.php?id=840235
Gorgeous scenery...incredibly dangerous job
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