Ed Kemmick/Last Best News
Scott Kinne stands next to the largest boulder that fell off the Rims just west of Zimmerman Trail Monday morning.
Several huge boulders sheared off the Rims just west of Zimmerman Trail early Monday, coming to rest about 150 feet from the home of Scott Kinne and Annette Stone.
“We have an RV,” Kinne said. “We spent the night in the Wal-Mart parking lot.”
Debi Meling, the city engineer, said another giant slab, in the same area and probably bigger than what fell Monday morning, is highly unstable, and she wouldn’t be surprised if it came down today.
“Tell people to stay away,” she said, noting that curious onlookers were hiking around the site when she went to look at it about 10 a.m.
The rockfall occurred sometime between 2:30 and 3 a.m., on the same day that an engineering company from Colorado was scheduled to begin a project to stabilize or remove dangerous rocks and sandstone slabs above Zimmerman Trail.
The winding road that connects Highway 3 with Rimrock Road has been closed since March 25, when rocks fell off the Rims and damaged the roadway and took out a long stretch of guardrail.
Dave Mumford, director of the city’s Public Works Department, said he went out to look at the latest damage at 6 a.m. Monday, then went back at 7:30 with Bill Kemp, manager of the streets and roads division of Public Works.
Mumford said the rockfall won’t change the scope of the Zimmerman Trail project, “but it does show how unstable that whole face is.”
Ed Kemmick/Last Best News
A huge new crevice marks the spot where enormous quantities of sandstone sheared off the Rims Monday morning.
Just ask Kinne. His house, at 3439 Timberline Drive, was built by his wife’s grandparents in 1969. He and his wife have lived there for 15 years.
Kinne said he was awakened between 2:30 and 3 a.m. Monday by what he described as a “dragging, rumbling sound.”
He went back to sleep and then heard a similar noise half an hour later. He thought it was high winds, which are not uncommon there, but when he got up and looked out through sliding glass doors to his backyard, “there was not a leaf moving.”
What he did see, in the light of his neighbor’s motion-activated outdoor lights, were huge clouds of fine dust. He went out with a flashlight and could see that there had been a rockfall, so he and his wife loaded up their dog and cat and headed for the Wal-Mart parking lot.
He didn’t know how big the fall was until a little before 9 a.m., when he returned home. That was also when a Last Best News reporter arrived, and as they were talking a few minutes later, a loud popping sound and a cloud of dust announced that there has just been another, much smaller, rockfall.
“If they think they can stabilize this son of a bitch, they’re crazy,” he said.
The ravine just west of Zimmerman Trail was full of freshly fallen rock Monday morning, including several immense boulders, many smaller chunks of stone and innumerable pieces of sandstone shrapnel scattered over the hillside.
Ed Kemmick/Last Best News
Scott Kinne, holding his rat terrier, Matisse, looks up at where boulders fell off the Rims Monday morning. That’s his house in the background.
Among the debris was one large gash in the ground, maybe three feet deep and 15 feet long, marking the spot where a boulder went skipping before coming to rest. Up above, on the Rims where the rocks sheared off, a long, wide new crevice — Kinne was sure he hadn’t seen it before — was visible, and projecting out from the crack was a horizontal slab of sandstone.
Later in the morning, Kinne spoke with Meling, the city engineer, and representatives of Terracon, a local engineering company that has been studying various sections of the Rims for years, who were on the scene.
Meling said the rock that fell Monday was the first one that was going to be taken out by GeoStabilization International, the Grand Junction, Colo., firm that will be doing the work on Zimmerman Trail. It was awarded a $718,000 contract on Thursday.
The work on Zimmerman Trail is mostly being paid for with federal highway funds. Meling said the project should take 25 days and will involve six areas where rocks will be removed or stabilized.
The city also asked Terracon to evaluate some problem areas above Sixth Avenue North. Based on that evaluation, Meling said, Public Works will be asking the City Council tonight to allow GeoStabilization International to work on two rock formations above Sixth Avenue.
That would have to be paid for with city funds and is estimated to cost about $200,000. Meling said it looks as though one of the problem areas could be stabilized with bolts, but the other might involve removing some rock.
Sixth Avenue North would be closed during the project, but it would probably take two days at most, she said.
UPDATE: Debi Meling sent this photo over about 11:30 a.m. It shows the same area of the Rims as in the photos above, but a little farther east. She said that crevice is even bigger than the one directly above the rockslide, and it is what leads her to believe that more rocks could fall today.
UPDATE No. 2: And boy, was she right. Don’t the miss the top story on Last Best News. The whole wall of rock in front of that crevice came crashing down later in the day.
