Independence Pass, key mountain roads set to reopen this week
DENVER — After needing snow shoes or hours-long detours to travel over parts of the Colorado mountains during regular winter closures, transit will become much easier with the reopening of key passes this week.
The reopenings arrive in time for Memorial Day weekend, a busy few days for mountain roads in Colorado.
Independence Pass, a famous scenic drive that connects Aspen to the Twin Lakes by way of Colorado Highway 82, will open to traffic at noon Thursday, May 21, the Colorado Department of Transportation announced in a press release Tuesday.
CDOT executive director Shoshana Lew called the pass, which crosses the Continental Divide at 12,095 feet in elevation, a “beautiful stretch of pure Colorado roadway.” Independence Pass is a popular destination to access hiking, springtime backcountry skiing and roadside views of the Rockies.
Cottonwood Pass, connecting Buena Vista to Almont via Chaffee County Road 306 and Gunnison County Road 209, will open on Thursday. According to a Facebook post from the Chaffee County Government, the road “should” open by 5 p.m., “contingent on weather conditions.”
The beloved Mount Blue Sky Scenic Byway will reopen to visitors on Saturday, May 22. The road to the summit of Mount Blue Sky, formerly named Mount Evans, features the highest paved road in the country at 14,130 feet in elevation. It will receive new tire marks for the first time since Labor Day weekend in 2024, when it closed to the public for prolonged repairs.
Reservations cost $20 for motor vehicles and must be made at recreation.gov, with the first entry windows available on Saturday at 7 a.m.
The National Park Service has yet to announce an opening date for Trail Ridge Road in Rocky Mountain National Park. The 12,183 foot-high pass typically opens around Memorial Day weekend, and reopened on May 30 last year.
The park shared a photo Tuesday of a foot of new snow on Trail Ridge Road, which, along with cold weather this week, could possibly delay the road’s opening.
At least one popular unpaved mountain road will open this week, too. Gunnison County posted to its website that Kebler Pass will open on Thursday, May 21. Boreas Pass remains closed, according to the Summit County website.
Despite the historically low snowpack clearing many mountain roads of snow well before normal, CDOT elected to keep roads closed to perform repairs, like filling potholes and clearing debris from the roadway. Guanella Pass, which reopened more than a month earlier than usual on April 16, was an exception.
The statewide average snowpack was 16% of the median for this time of year as of May 19, according to data from the Natural Resources Conservation Service.
In 2024, about 154,000 vehicles passed through the Eisenhower/Johnson tunnels along Interstate 70 during the Memorial Day weekend, about 16% of the tunnels’ total May traffic that year.
An estimate from AAA forecasts a record 39.1 million drivers to travel 50 miles or more by car for Memorial Day in 2026, despite average gas prices of $4.53 per gallon countrywide and $4.75 in Colorado. AAA projects peak congestion in the state to be northbound on I-25 at 5 p.m. on Monday, and ranks Denver as the ninth-busiest domestic travel destination for the weekend, according to booking data.
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