A major highway in Colorado has been shut down after two boulders fell from a hillside and destroyed the road.
One boulder, estimated to weigh over a thousand tonnes, landed a direct hit on the main highway between the famed Telluride Ski Resort and the township of Cortez in Colorado.
The other, weighing an estimated three thousand tonnes, rolled across the full width of the highway, leaving a trench approximately 2.5m deep across both lanes.
A photo taken by local council workers shows the scale of one of the rocks, described as "the size of a small building".
No one was injured in the rockfall and the road will remain closed until specialists can blast the boulders into smaller pieces so they can be removed.
Rockslides are a relatively common phenomena in Colorado and many do affect mountain highways, particularly in spring after the repeated melting and freezing of snow and ice destabilises the mountainside.
Newshub.
