High maintenance: Mount Evans road gets a makeover
By Andy Piper 
| July 14, 2009 | 9:01 AM
When you’re responsible for the highest paved road in North America, it’s logical that you also have to do the highest road-paving repairs in North America.
So the Colorado Department of Transportation will be closing Colorado 5, the road from Echo Lake to the summit of Mount Evans, three days a week through the end of July.
The full road will be accessible to visitors Fridays through Mondays (weather permitting) — except for this Saturday, July 18, when it will be closed for the Bob Cook Memorial Mt. Evans Hill Climb. But on Tuesdays through Thursdays, the only traffic will be excavators; front-end loaders; and trucks carrying sand, gravel and asphalt.
The paving work is needed to fix two kinds of problems: frost heaves that have turned the approach to Summit Lake into a roller-coaster, and shoulder erosion that is eating into the pavement along some of the more white-knuckle stretches of road.
Thursday, on the section called “Middle Lincoln,” where Colorado 5 makes a careening curve across the mountain’s face 500 feet above Lincoln Lake, CDOT’s Scot Crabdree was using his John Deere 200LC excavator to lift and nudge boulders into a stone ledge that will support an additional 4 or 5 feet of road width.
The boulders are free for the taking along the upslope side of the road. They weigh up to a ton or more, but Crabdree’s nimble fingers on the controls usually nudged them into place as smoothly as toy blocks.
Crabdree took a break from his cab to explain the problems.
“We’re supposed to have a minimum of 11 feet for each lane, but right here it’s down to nine feet. The shoulder is just eroding with time.”
As he spoke, rocks and chunks of broken asphalt loosened by the work occasionally tumbled and bounced a hundred yards down the 35-degree slope toward the lake before sliding to rest — a fast-forward example of the erosion problem.
“We’ve got some major frost heaves up there (below Summit Lake). Ultimately, they’re probably going to have to raise the road, but right now we’re just going to try to keep it as smooth as we can, with hand patching or blade patching, or whatever we can do with asphalt.”
Crabdree’s crew is larger than normal for the job size because of the exhausting effects of the 12,000-foot elevation. But there is some additional compensation in the panoramic views and occasional wildlife supervision of this cone zone.
“That’s a neat feature,” Crabdree said.
CDOT reminds travelers to use extra caution while driving the Mount Evans road in July. Until the repair work is complete, they will encounter especially narrow or bumpy parts of the highway in the unfinished repair zones.
More on Mount Evans:
RMI graphic by Andy Piper
CDOT, colorado, construction, mount evans, road, transportation
