Well, there goes all those western slope Armslist adverts hoping to get sales from the front range. The Steamboat and Craig sellers are still available …
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Well, there goes all those western slope Armslist adverts hoping to get sales from the front range. The Steamboat and Craig sellers are still available …
You can still easily get to the western slope for those deals. Just have to detour off 70 on 40 up through Winter Park and go through Steamboat to Craig and take 13 south into Rifle. Easy as pie and probably only adds about four and a half or five hours to the drive each way.Quote:
Originally Posted by wctriumph
Now if 50 would just have a nice big rock slide in the middle of the night when nobody is around. :)
So the counties want $70-80 million to pave cottonwood pass.
My question is what non 4x4 road leaves Taylor basin that GPS is sending people on?
By Taylor Basin I presume you mean the Taylor River area? My guess would be Kebler Pass. Dirt but definitely not 4x4. Well graded, smooth, definitely a viable alternative.Quote:
Originally Posted by Eric P
I've never been on the Cottonwood Pass you're talking about
For reasons of clarity, there are, to my knowledge, at least 3 "Cottonwood Passes" in CO. The most well known is the one that runs between Buena Vista and the Taylor Park Reservoir Northeast of Gunnison. Lesser known Cottonwood passes are the one that runs (AFAIK) between Gypsum and Carbondale (County road 10A) and I think this must be the one you are referring to.
There is also a Cottonwood Pass in Grand County between Hot Sulphur Springs and Fraser.
US 50 has been a mess since April due to the big reconstruction going on just East of Montrose that either had the road completely closed or down to 1 lane with significant delays.Quote:
Originally Posted by D_F
I looked on the CDOT web page and saw that due to I-70 closing, work there has either been suspended or curtailed so US 50 is open with one lane in each direction. So, depending on where you are going on the Western Slope, US 285 to Poncha Springs and then US 50 over Monarch Pass may be quicker than going through Craig and Meeker.
Maybe this will reignite the call to reopen the pass bergen Nederland and Winter Park. Won't help the Glenwood situation, but whatevs.
Hindsight is 20/20 but in retrospect, it would likely have been easier if I-70 had followed the route of US 285 and 50 over Monarch Pass to Montrose and then up to Grand Junction from the beginning. Glenwood Canyon is certainly an engineering marvel but it's always been "high maintenance" and always will be. And realistically speaking, I don't think there's a viable alternative that is anywhere reasonably close to the Glenwood corridor.
So my guess is that they'll do what they can to patch Glenwood Canyon and like the wildfires that ravage the mountains every year, periodic Glenwood Canyon closures are just going to be something we have to live with.
"Way back when" it might have been possible to build a new route that roughly follows Cottonwood Pass, heading South from Gypsum, crosses Gypsum Creek and then goes over the relatively flat ground (at least compared to the areas North of Glenwood Canyon, which is extremely mountainous) and approach Glenwood Springs from the Southeast:
Attachment 87069
But starting a project like that from scratch now would be ruinously expensive and while patching Glenwood Canyon until the next big mud slide pretty much "kicks the can down the road", in practical and political terms, it's the most reasonable course of action.
I'm glad they didn't do the monarch pass route tbh. On paper it's decent, but monarch pass does not an easy one for an interstate to cross. The route from GJ - > Denver is 3 hours, while Montrose -> Pueblo alone is 4 1/2 right now (GJ is 5.5), which would not be improved much by an interstate. In any event, it would add an average of 2 hours to almost every trans-divide commute even as an interstate. East of Montrose climbing into Gunnison is also not a great interstate pathway, traffic would be 25 mph over both sections with tons of switchbacks on an interstate no matter how you cut it.Quote:
Originally Posted by Martinjmpr
The south gypsum passage you mentioned is kind of interesting though. Never have thought of that. Compared to what they blow on some infrastructure projects it's not necessarily unachievable either.
Or we could just do our own "chunnel" and just make a 100 mile straight tunnel under all the bullshit [Beer] compared to what we paid on stimulus even that would be "chump change"
ETA: I'm obviously not serious about a tunnel, I might be dumb on some things, nobody is that dumb.
ETA 2: Although we could spend an extra 90 billion dollars to build a park on top of the tunnel for all the homeless people to shoot up in. Win/win on the marketing.
A bridge that doesn't touch either canyon wall would have mud slides go right under it, right? Might be easier on the rock slides as well.