Black Bear Road closes for maintenance, Telluride access faces delays

Black Bear Road shut down from the Idarado Mine to Ingram Falls on Thursday, June 25, taking the Via Ferrata, parking areas and trails inside the work zone with it. San Miguel County closed the CR K69 corridor from 6 a.m. to 5 p.m. so Road & Bridge crews could clear the switchbacks on the face of the pass and complete maintenance safely.

The county posted the closure alert on June 22, giving visitors only a short window to reshuffle plans in one of Telluride’s most crowded adventure corridors. For anyone building a day around Black Bear Road, this was a full access restriction, not a simple traffic slowdown. If the route was the anchor for a climb, a hike or a scenic drive, the route itself was off the table for the day.

The disruption did not stop at the pass. San Miguel County also warned of long delays entering Telluride because of construction at the Tomboy Road and Oak Street intersection, with backups potentially stretching four hours or more. That meant two different parts of a single trip could unravel at once: the off-road run above town and the approach into town below it.

For visitors trying to salvage a Southwest Colorado loop through Telluride, Ouray, Silverton or the San Juan Mountains, the practical move was to treat road status as part of the itinerary, not an afterthought. The county directed travelers to forest road status updates, Alpine Loop information and alert sign-ups, a reminder that summer in this corner of Colorado no longer guarantees open access just because the snow is gone. A planned Black Bear run could disappear, the Via Ferrata staging area could close, and the drive into town could still crawl.

The corridor’s fragility was already familiar. In 2025, another Black Bear Pass closure cut off the Via Ferrata and shut Bridal Veil Road up to the falls after an unstable vehicle got stuck on a switchback and needed a tow. That earlier shutdown made the June maintenance closure feel less like a routine road job and more like another hard lesson in how quickly one of Telluride’s signature adventure links can go dark.