This weekend’s intense storms brought with them mudslides that temporarily blocked Colorado River Road and turned the Colorado River red in Eagle County. 

Heavy rain on Friday and Saturday swept red mud and trees from the hillside across the road and into the river.

Mudslide washes out Colorado River Road

Around 1 p.m. on Friday afternoon, Nicole Bradford, who lives near McCoy, was driving home from Gypsum on Colorado River Road through a rainstorm. “It was raining hard and then I ran into a truck that said it had just slid and I wouldn’t get through,” Bradford wrote in a Facebook message to the Vail Daily.

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Bradford, a lifelong Eagle County resident, decided to continue along the road to assess the damage. Before turning around, she took a video of the washed-out road and railroad tracks, and the reddened Colorado River, which she shared to Facebook.

Though the scene looked dramatic, it was not Bradford’s first encounter with such a mudslide. “I have seen this before,” Bradford wrote. “A heavy downpour like that will cause it. This has happened several times on the river road near that area and others.”

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In cases like Friday’s mudslide, Eagle County is responsible for clearing both the road and the railroad tracks.

The Colorado River runs red

Eagle resident Tommy Harris heard about Friday’s mudslide on Colorado River Road from his friend, who encountered it while returning home from Steamboat Springs. The friend suggested they drive up the road on Saturday to assess the road conditions a day later.

By the time they reached the road, around 5:30 or 6 p.m. on Saturday, they saw that it had already been plowed and was clear to pass.

However, as the friends continued driving up Colorado River Road, another storm hit, triggering more mudslides. While the road remained clear, the mud flowed into the Colorado River, turning it red.

“The middle was trunks and branches and thick mud down the middle, and then on the outsides was red clay water with little mini rivers in between those around clearer water,” Harris said.

Harris, who has lived in the area since 2003, said, “I’ve never seen that before in my life.”

Harris took a video a few miles up the dirt road on Colorado River Road, around the 22-mile marker, about 4 miles past the scene of Friday’s mudslide. “It was so intense with mud that I had to take the video,” Harris said.

“The mud wash was insane. All the way back to Dotsero, it looked like that on the river,” Harris said. “I don’t know if you can see too many in the video, but it seemed like there were a good amount of trees that came down in between State Bridge and Burns.”

The Eagle River, where it intersects with the Colorado River, after the boat launch in Dotsero, was also impacted by the mud, Harris said.

Mudslides caused by rain also closed Colorado Highway 82 south of Glenwood Springs on Saturday.