"Red Mountain Pass, per mile, has the highest avalanche hazard on the North American continent," the Herald's Chase Olivarius-Mcallister writes. "The narrow two-lane road winds through the mountains like a drunk crazily stumbling, and there’s no guardrail to protect cars attempting hairpin turns from hurtling into the jagged ravines that lie, stunning and ominous, hundreds of feet below."
A public-relations manager for the Ouray Chamber Resort Association, in the town overlooked by the pass, said the road lacks guardrails because they would block plowed snow and eventually keep snowplows from clearing the road. Avalanches once plagued the road, but various countermeasures have kept anyone from being killed in an avalanche on it since 1992, a Colorado Department of Transportation spokesperson told the Herald.
The story is accompanied by an informative sidebar and a photo gallery by Jerry McBride. And here's an extra, a photo by Patti Cross shortly after we topped the pass.
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