BOULDER CANYON - At around 11 p.m. on Saturday, March 29, 2025, a rockslide disrupted large boulders that punched huge holes in Boulder Canyon Drive. This caused a closure of the highway, affecting locals and out-of-town skiers all Sunday morning and afternoon.

Colorado Highway 119 was closed between Hurricane Hill Drive and Magnolia Drive, between Mile Point 27.5 and 36.5, due to the damage incurred during Saturday’s snowfall and subsequent rockslide. 

The Colorado Department of Transportation’s (CDOT) updates warned of expected delays and recommended detours, including CO 7 going west from Lyons to CO 72 South, and CO 93 going south to CO 72 West. 

On social media, as the canyon was reported still closed on Sunday morning, Nederland locals hoped that they would experience a “locals day” up at the ski mountain. However, many worried—and predicted correctly—that unofficial alternate routes Sugarloaf Road and Magnolia Road were going to become packed with local and ski traffic. 

Everett Nielsen of CDOT, who acted as Lead on repairing the highway, spoke to The Mountain-Ear about the situation cleaning up the aftermath of the large boulders that struck the canyon road.

“This thing, which is about the size of that VW bus over there…” Nielsen pointed at the bus parked outside his tattoo shop, Inkhaus Tattoo Studio on North Jefferson Street in Nederland. “…it fell from 800 feet above and punched a two-foot-deep hole in our road.”

Nielsen expressed a little bit of relief that the bus-sized boulder, after striking the road, bounced and rolled into the stream, as his team would have had to use explosives to remove the immense boulder if it were sitting in the middle of the canyon. 

“We had to dig out everything in the hole, fill it full of road base, and then cold patch it,” Nielsen explained, adding that CDOT will most likely return soon to address the underlying damage to the highway.

“We’re going to have to cut a big section out of the road and repave it because the road is cracked,” Nielsen said, noting that a longitudinal crack runs down the yellow line for about 300 feet around Mile point 34.7, right below the slow vehicle pullout before the area known as “The Narrows.” 

Thanks to Nielsen and the CDOT crew of just four members, Boulder Canyon Drive was reopened on Sunday at 3:30 p.m., six hours earlier than estimated. The crew worked for hours to clear the debris and repair the immense damage to the highway, followed by a geo-technical team that analyzed and confirmed that the canyon’s walls were stable.