A swath of Smuggler Mountain slid down a gully above North Spruce Street on Wednesday afternoon, leaving a gash in the hillside and muddy water running towards homes.
The mudslide happened at about 4:45 p.m. and left a two-foot-deep crown at its top approximately 50 feet wide and 100 yards long.
The slide occurred in a gully just below the last curve in Smuggler Mountain Road before the observation deck. At 7 p.m., water was still pouring steadily off the road and down a channel leading directly to the top of the slide.
As night fell, city street crews were on the mountain working under rainy skies with a backhoe and front-end loader to dig a channel to divert the runoff from the road near the observation deck into a steep gully leading down into Hunter Creek.
That section of the Smuggler Mountain Road is in Pitkin County, but city of Aspen crews responded after the sheriff’s office received a call at 4:45 p.m., said Jerry Nye, the city street superintendent.
Nye was on the scene last night, working to coordinate the movements of two pieces of heavy equipment that were wallowing in the mud and snow at the top of the road.
The call to officials reporting the mudslide came from a construction crew working on a new home at 777 North Spruce St., just below the gully where the slide ran.
Ben Niiler, project manager on the house for Silich Construction, said his crews noticed a quick change in the water running through a temporary runoff channel on the construction site.
“Yeah, they came in and said ‘Hey, the water is getting deeper and it’s getting muddier’ and said they looked up and saw the slide,” said Niiler.
After the slide, muddy water ran down North Spruce Street, which is steep and curvy. The runoff dug a small trench on one side of the road, then headed towards a house at the bottom of the road.
Niiler said a resident had been out in her yard working with a small shovel to try to dig a diversion channel. “It is all surface water from somewhere in that valley coming down the hill,” Niiler said.
Mario Strobl, a patrol director with the Pitkin County Sheriff’s Office, didn’t think anyone was in danger from the slide yesterday, but did say, “We did have a little flooding issue.”
It could be a sign of things to come, as warmer temperatures have finally arrived in the Roaring Fork Valley and are speeding the melting of a record snowpack sitting on top of wet ground.
The high temperature in Aspen on Wednesday was 60 degrees at 4:53 p.m., minutes after the slide was reported. Tuesday’s afternoon high in Aspen was 65 degrees.
Adding to the spring runoff Wednesday night was the first steady rain of the spring. A 60 percent chance of rain and snow was forecast for throughout the day today.
bgs@aspendailynews.com