GoI70

The weekend of January 23rd and 24th will be marked by new snow in the mountains. Good news for skiers and boarders; perhaps not so good news for travelers.

The snow will start to fall Thursday evening along the corridor in southern Colorado and will move into the corridor Friday afternoon. It should continue throughout the weekend. Expect windy conditions at times. Taken together there could be some challenging evenings on the highway headed home to Denver. Be specially careful of those transitions between the warm late afternoon and quick cooling after the sun is off the highway.

As we learned last Sunday just a little snow during the peak recreational traffic can make the ride home treacherous. While most winter travelers are skilled at navigating over snow packed roads, it only takes one or two accidents to bring the highway to a stop. Vail Pass and the approaches to the Eisenhower Tunnel are specially susceptible to stoppages. So be a bit cautious, watch the traffic in front of you and travel with some food, water, extra clothes and blankets.

When it is snowing it can be somewhat harder to gauge the best time to head home. Expect the roads to start to get busy by 2 pm. Ski traffic has been leaving the resorts a little later than that this year but that will change if there is fresh snow on the highway. If you can, consider letting the highway clear out before heading home.

You can keep track of changing conditions and speeds with GoI70. You can follow us on your mobile phone by signing up through Twitter and selecting text alerts. Follow us on your smart phone on our mobile web pages at http://goI70.com/mobile. There you will find recent text alerts and comments from other highway users and you can follow the current delays by highway segment under the Trip Details tab.

Sign on and help us keep tabs on highway conditions by posting updates to GoI70.com’s social network. It’s easy and helps the entire GoI70 community. Just go to the Messages tab on the GoI70 main page.

When you head home in the afternoon after skiing plan to spend a little more time on the road this weekend. Great skiing will be worth it, but don’t get caught with a nearly empty tank of gas or in need of food.

Have fun on the slopes! Be safe!