DENVER (KDVR) — Miles of Denver area highways were closed at the height of Sunday’s snowstorm. Hundreds of drivers were stranded up and down Colorado’s Front Range.
Vehicles still littered the sides of highway exit ramps late Monday afternoon in Denver and Aurora. After digging out at home, drivers navigated a scavenger hunt to find their cars— only to dig out again.
Russ Hurley saw folks stuck off Interstate 70 near E-470 Monday afternoon. He used a shovel to help gain traction.
“You have to just keep going … or rock [the vehicle] back and forth, which is what we were trying to do,” he said.
In the High Country, Tony Pierangeli was stuck for roughly six hours in Vail on Sunday afternoon and evening. He said his ordeal was due to a preemptive CDOT highway closure.
“The people in front of us were trying to get to Breck,” Pierangeli said. “The people behind us were trying to get to Copper.”
CDOT said officials decide when and where to close highways on a case-by-case basis to prevent collisions and give plows the opportunity to clear highways.
The state points to certain areas as especially problematic during snowstorms such as I-70 from Airpark to the Kansas, the Interstate 25 South Gap and various sections of the I-70 Mountain Corridor.
CDOT stressed the importance of preemptive safety closures. If crews wait to close a highway after a pileup, it takes much longer for them to reopen that highway compared to a preemptive closure, according to CDOT.