Seven mountain passes and highway segments across Colorado's central corridor. Status pulled from CDOT each morning.
These seven segments are the ones that decide whether a day in Summit, Eagle, or Park County actually happens. The Eisenhower Tunnel and Vail Pass carry the I-70 corridor. Loveland Pass is the tunnel's only alternate and the mandatory hazmat route. Hoosier and Fremont connect Summit County south to Park and Lake Counties. US 285 over Kenosha Pass is the Denver-to-South-Park route that avoids I-70 entirely. Independence Pass is the highest paved through-route in the state, and it is gated all winter.
Status comes from CDOT COTrip and refreshes once each morning, before 5 AM Mountain Time. That is a planning snapshot and nothing more — for anything happening right now, cotrip.org and the variable message signs are authoritative.
A closed pass in this corridor is rarely a weather problem on its own. It is usually a vehicle problem caused by weather — a jackknifed semi on the Vail Pass descent, a spun-out car in the tunnel bore, an unequipped vehicle stuck on the Loveland switchbacks. That matters for planning, because a wreck clears in an hour or two while a storm lasts all day.
The other pattern worth knowing: the alternates fail together. When Vail Pass closes, the detour is two hours over Tennessee Pass. When the tunnel closes, the detour is Loveland Pass, which is higher and closes more readily in the same storm. In a real event, waiting usually beats driving around.
I-70 · 11,158 ft · Silverthorne to Georgetown.
I-70 · 10,662 ft · Copper Mountain to Vail.
US 6 · 11,990 ft · Arapahoe Basin and Keystone to Georgetown.
CO 9 · 11,542 ft · Breckenridge to Fairplay.
CO 91 · 11,318 ft · Copper Mountain to Leadville.
US 285 · 10,001 ft · Denver to Fairplay and South Park.
CO 82 · 12,095 ft · Twin Lakes to Aspen.
Snow, fishing, and trail scores for the whole corridor, updated daily.
Live flows and scores for twelve rivers and creeks.
Where to go, and which route to take to get there.
Colorado's highest road, and a very different kind of drive.