Snow delays road opening, jeep tours

OURAY COUNTY  — Jeep tourism in Ouray County is facing delays as the county’s road and bridge department plows through overwhelming amounts of snow on the area’s most popular trails.

“We’re still in our beginning stages,” said Chris Miller, Ouray County road and bridge superintendent.

The five-man team has numerous roads to open in Ouray County and jeep tours, a major tourist industry in Ouray, can only wait. Those trails consist of Yankee Boy Basin, Red Mountain Town, Corkscrew, Brown Mountain, Engineer Pass and Imogene Pass. However, deep snow is making progress slow and the team is several weeks behind.

The department started plowing Yankee Boy on May 5. The usual 10-day plowing project is already weeks behind, but Miller was hoping to finish there yesterday and move onto Red Mountain Town at the top of Red Mountain Pass.

“We’re just going to have to bail right back in,” he said.

In a normal year, Yankee Boy usually has 2 to 3 feet on the road and is easy to work, he said. But this is no normal year, and where the crew started plowing, the road was covered with more than 8 feet and it only got deeper.

Also hindering progress were several snowslides that haven’t run in almost a century.

“They brought down 100-year-old trees ... all twisted up,” Miller said. He said the slides took several 10-hour days to move.

The jeep traffic can now get up to the last Forest Service campground, where the crew traditionally stops plowing. The clearing of the road has been a relief for Ouray’s tour businesses.

“It’s affecting us a little bit, but were are still doing half-day trips,” said Bob Burdick, owner of Colorado West Jeep Rentals and Tours.

Burdick has been with Colorado West for 25 years and has never seen this much snow before. He also owns a sleigh ride business in Telluride. However, he was unable to open that business this winter there was too much snow for his horses and sleigh to track through.

To help the projects move along, the local jeep businesses pay their workers to be “spotters” for the crew. They move a jeep along behind the Caterpillar D5 Dozer and watch for any dangerous situations, such as avalanches, Miller said.

Though the snow is more than 15 feet deep in many places, he said removing it is still one of the best jobs in the county.

“You couldn’t ask for a better office,” he said.

Because there are not many markers on the roads, the crew works from memory. They figure about where the road is and work their way down, he said.

From Red Mountain Town, which Miller said will take about four days, the crew will move onto Corkscrew and Brown Mountain.

Both are about a five- to eight-mile stretch with 2 to 3 feet of snow on the road.

Another project is the county’s entrance to Silverjack Reservoir. It is Forest Service land, but Miller said he’s got clearance to plow. However, he needs to find the time and must have the right conditions. Currently, visitor scan only get to the first campground from the Cimarron area entrance, he said. He hopes he can get the Ridgway road cleared sometime in the next two weeks.

The end of the department’s projects will take the crew to Engineer and Imogene passes. Engineer, Miller said, is fairly easy, but Imogene is one of the hardest projects of the summer. There is no help from the sun as most of the road is in the shade. Right now, he said, there is no way to even get down to the area.

Last year the crew finished up around July 2, with a goal to have the jeep trails open by the Fourth of July weekend. However, this year is looking grim.

Miller said he hopes they can have the areas ready by late July, but the projects could take them into August. Right now the crew is working two employees with one dozer, but the county might rent another to move things along quicker, Miller said.

Contact Kati O’Hare via e-mail at katio@montrosepress.com