Cottonwood Pass Opens 5/26 4PM

[Monster5]

According to the phone voices, Cottonwood Pass opens:

2016: Tomorrow, 5/26 at 4PM
2017: Not at all for major road improvements.
2018: Delayed opening

http://www.gunnisoncounty.org/CivicAlerts.aspx?AID=66" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
http://www.chaffeecountytimes.com/free_ ... ec2ae.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[JQDivide]

2017: They (County or State) are paving Cottonwood Pass on the Taylor Park side.
Will be interesting to see how it looks after they are finished.

JQ

[DaveLanders]

The local politics involved in the 2017 closure are "interesting". Chaffee and Gunnison counties had an agreement a number of years ago to pave both sides of Cottonwood Pass. Gunnison County reneged on their half of the agreement. At the time, I heard that they were worried that too many people wouldn't go through Gunnison to get to the Taylor Park area or Crested Butte (at least in the summer), and that would cost the local businesses in Gunnison too much lost revenue. It's interesting that they changed their minds, and now Buena Vista is complaining.

[gb]

Somewhat related: Kebler Pass will not be open due to damage near Lost Lake.

It will be nice once Taylor is paved on both sides. I've heard it will be a mile or two shorter, too. Hope they put a size limit on it, like Indy. The RV's can't make those sharp turns right now, so they take up the entire roadway.

[Monster5]

Yeah looks like they had a decent sized landslide and are awaiting a geotech engineer's opinion, which they'll promptly ignore and just re-grade it once they figure out $15k/year < $200k to stabilize.