It was a rough weekend to drive in parts of the western slope…
(Giant Rock Closes I-70, Broken Up :36)
A 3-mile stretch of eastbound I-70 was closed for a while Saturday, and looked like it might not be passable for days, after a massive rockslide came down onto the interstate in the DeBeque (dih-BECK) Canyon around 9:45 Friday night. One boulder was so huge, it seemed to block both eastbound lanes of the highway, just east of mile marker 43, about 9 ½ miles north of Palisade. That rock initially appeared it might shut the road down for quite a while, but CDOT crews managed to break it up with drilling equipment and other gear, then just hauled those smaller rocks away, within a few hours. They also made some repairs to the surface before reopening the interstate, and it was carrying normal traffic again by late Saturday afternoon.