Mudslides Close I-70 Near Parachute, Top August Most Read

Rifle —"Westbound Interstate 70 is closed at mile markers 72 and 75 near Parachute."

Those words hit the Garfield County Emergency Communications Authority’s notification feed on Sunday night. Then came the second one. Mile marker 105 in New Castle. Mudslides had swallowed the road. Traffic diverted to Highway 6. If you were commuting home from Aspen or heading into town from the east, your Sunday evening just got a lot longer.

The Garfield County Emergency Communications Authority confirmed all previously closed roads reopened by 8:23 a.m. Monday. The short version: the mud is gone, but the memory of that closure will stick for anyone who got stuck on Highway 6 in the dark.

Mudslides aren’t new to this stretch of I-70. But they are a reminder that the valley floor is not as stable as the pavement suggests.

The Post Independent’s most-read list for August 24 through August 31 tells you where the community’s attention actually went. It wasn’t just about traffic.

At number one, Dr. John Green closed his Rifle veterinary practice after 36 years. He told Katherine Tomanek about growing up on a ranch in Rifle, watching the vet arrive with dread and curiosity.

“My parents weren’t too happy about the vet coming, because it always meant an expensive visit,” Green recalled. “I was always in his way, asking questions, watching him do procedures and watching how things worked.”

That curiosity built a career spanning more than four decades. He operated the practice alongside his wife, Christa. For Rifle residents who have walked their dogs or their livestock through those doors for decades, this is a quiet loss. A piece of the town’s infrastructure just shut down.

Number three pulled readers into the Elk Mountains. Brandon Hinkle fell 500 feet off North Maroon Peak on August 16 and survived. He is a Colorado native who has climbed every one of the state’s "14ers" at least once. Genny Gottdiener reported on the incident, noting that between 2000 and 2015, 20 climbers died while climbing the Maroon Bells. Hinkle avoided that fate. He was evacuated from the peak after the fall.

The Maroon Bells have a nickname for a reason: "The Deadly Bells." Hinkle’s survival is remarkable. It is also a stark statistical outlier in a mountain range that has claimed lives for over a century.

Number four is local and unglamorous. Great Expectations, a Glenwood Springs-based nonprofit, helps new and expectant parents navigate prenatal care, early childhood development, and mental health challenges at no cost. Pierce Sullivan reported that the team serves about 200 families at a time through home visitation from nurses and family support specialists.

The strength of the program is consistency. In a valley where isolation can make new parenthood feel like navigating a maze in the dark, having a nurse show up on your porch matters.

Number five involves Rifle City Council pressing Xcel Energy on power shutoffs. The headline cuts off in the reporting, but the tension is clear. Utility providers and rural communities rarely agree on what constitutes a reasonable outage or a fair disconnection process.

Read that again. The most-read stories of the week were about a vet closing, a road washing out, a climber falling, a nonprofit helping parents, and a city fighting its power company.

These are the stories that define daily life on the Western Slope. They aren’t flashy. They don’t make national headlines. But they determine whether you get home on time, whether your pet gets care, and whether you have power when the wind picks up.

The mudslides cleared by Monday morning. The roads reopened. But the questions raised by that Sunday night closure — about infrastructure, about weather patterns, about how quickly we can respond when the ground gives way — don’t clear as easily.

Dr. Green’s practice is closed. The doors are shut after 36 years. Who picks up the slack for Rifle’s animals? That is a question Xcel Energy, Garfield County, and Glenwood Springs nonprofits are all grappling with in their own ways.

The week is done. The roads are open. The next mudslide, the next power outage, and the next 500-foot fall are already waiting.