April 28, 2014 Fort Collins, Colorado

We headed back to Fort Collins today, over two passes. We managed to squeeze between snow storms.

They had Vail pass closed last night for a few hours, then they opened it with the chain law in effect. We have no chains for the bus, plus have no desire to drive it on slick roads anyway. At 9 am they lifted the chain law and around 11 John and Mandy, who had left before us called and said the roads were only wet. More snow was predicted for this afternoon and tonight, so we chanced it and left. Here we are heading up Vail pass into a storm.  The snow beside the road on Vail pass, and it was snowing and in the 20 degrees.

At the summit it was still snowing, but the road was wet, not frozen.  Copper mountain ski area just to the east of Vail pass is closed, but still has plenty of snow and it was snowing.

Heading up to the Eisenhower Tunnel, temps dropping back  into the 20’s and snowing. The windshield started freezing up. At the west tunnel approach, snow, blowing snow and freezing windshield, but the roads were mostly still wet.

The east side of the tunnel had more snow, the road was starting to turn white, and some slush, but no ice. Loveland ski area at the west side of the tunnel has an 86 inch base and just got 15 inches of snow over the weekend. It is still open and the parking lot was full.  By the time we reached Denver it was partly sunny and green. But there was high winds. We made it to Fort Collins exhausted. I was totally freaked out in the snow, but John stayed calm and we arrived without incident.

John and Mandy stopped at Loveland and skied on the way back. They called when we were almost back and said I-70 was a sheet of ice and there were accidents all over the place. Glad we made it through when we did.