AUTUMN BAIR HAD TRAVELED THE 12-AND-A-HALF-MILE STRETCH OF I-70 THROUGH GLENWOOD CANYON hundreds of times, but this trip had her gripping her steering wheel so tightly her hands hurt. It was the night of July 29, 2021, and Bair had just left Valley View Hospital in Glenwood Springs, where the 39-year-old works as a part-time labor and delivery nurse. She’d been visiting a friend who’d just given birth and was late getting home. Bair called her husband, Jim, to tell him she was on her way to the family’s ranch east of the city. It had been raining off and on for more than five hours, and flooding was a real possibility. Bair hoped the interstate wasn’t closed.
Like everyone who lives in the area, Bair knew the havoc bad weather could cause inside the 2,000-foot-deep canyon. A shutdown on I-70 could turn an easy commute into a 90-minute nightmare over two-lane, high-elevation Cottonwood Pass. Bair looked at the time on her phone: It was almost 9 p.m. She needed to get home—now.
Barely five miles into the drive, Bair was already questioning her decision to leave work. Her Volkswagen Passat passed semitrucks crawling along in the right lane, their distorted emergency blinkers flashing prismatically through the raindrops that pounded her windshield.
The canyon walls reached high above the road, a rain-slickened, two-tiered ribbon of highway and bridges. In the daylight, this would likely rank as one of the most beautiful drives in America. In the rain, Bair felt like a bowling ball hurtling blindly down a lane. She fixed her mind on the Hanging Lake Tunnel, a few miles ahead. After 13 years of living on a ranch in the canyon, she knew weather often changed on the other side of the passage. Maybe things would get better.
She reached the west end of the tunnel about 20 minutes later. Two more miles, she thought to herself. Two more miles and she’d be back with her husband and their four kids.
When Bair exited the tunnel’s east end, sheets of water hammered her windshield. She couldn’t remember seeing rain this hard; her wipers couldn’t keep up. There were only a few headlights and brake lights in the distance. She was one of the only people on this strip of interstate.
Bair was passing a ravine in the canyon wall when her headlights caught some movement to her left. A wave of dark sludge cascaded over the concrete barrier that divided the interstate. Bair heard herself scream. She felt a thud on her Volkswagen’s door, and the windshield went black. She was sure Glenwood Canyon was about to kill her.
of interstate highway in America. Among the national web of asphalt, concrete, and steel that connects us, the 66,000-foot stretch of I-70 that runs through Glenwood Canyon stands
