An avalanche off Highlands Ridge over the weekend deposited tons of snow in Conundrum Creek Valley, snapped hundreds of mature trees, threatened a house and wiped out the trailhead for the Conundrum Valley Trail, a popular route to Conundrum Hot Springs.

“This is as big of an avalanche as this terrain can produce,” said Brian Lazar, deputy director of the Colorado Avalanche Information Center. “This is a landscape-changing event.”

The avalanche broke over a mile wide and ran more than 3,000 vertical feet downhill, CAIC estimated from aerial observations. Lazar said it started just outside the boundary of Aspen Highlands ski area.

A house at the end of Conundrum Creek Road sustained damage from the slide but was spared from obliteration by an avalanche retaining wall built in the shape of a protective wedge. The chimney was knocked askew and fir and aspen trees planted outside were snapped off and bent over from the force of the snow. The house is about 7 miles southwest of Aspen.

Read more at aspentimes.com

Historic-sized avalanche off Highlands Ridge was over a mile wide and took out large swaths of forest (March 9, 2019)

Source: Colorado Avalanche Information Center