Colorado Memorial Day travel warning, expect heavy mountain traffic

Colorado’s dry winter and spring turned Memorial Day weekend into a bigger mountain-traffic test than usual, and CDOT warned that the heaviest pressure would land on I-70 and other routes feeding the high country. With trails, campgrounds and scenic byways more accessible than normal, the agency said holiday travel could easily run above historical averages.

CDOT Director of Maintenance and Operations Shawn Smith said Memorial Day is usually quiet between winter and summer tourism seasons, but low 2026 snowpack changed the pattern. More access to Colorado’s high country, Smith said, was expected to entice a much higher volume of motorists into the mountains than CDOT typically saw for the holiday. That meant more congestion, more competition for parking and more unpredictable travel times for anyone headed for a raft put-in, a campsite or a mountain pass.

To ease some of the gridlock, CDOT suspended all statewide construction and maintenance projects starting at noon Friday, May 22, 2026, and said work would not resume until Tuesday morning, May 26, 2026. The pause removed some lane-closing work from the holiday window, but it did not eliminate the traffic surge on the most popular recreation corridors. CDOT specifically pointed travelers to the I-70 Mountain Corridor, a 144-mile route from the Denver metro area to Glenwood Springs and the only east-west interstate crossing Colorado.

Drivers were urged to check conditions before leaving and to use COtrip.org or the COtrip Planner app for live traffic tracking, camera feeds and real-time alerts. The app also offered push notifications, along with text and email alerts, giving travelers a way to catch delays before they were already stuck in them. For mountain-bound weekend plans, that kind of advance check mattered as much as the departure time itself.

Dry conditions added another layer to the trip planning. CDOT said several counties and federal lands had already implemented fire restrictions, and travelers were told to confirm local rules before heading out because campfires could be barred outside permanently developed metal or masonry fire rings. The same weather pattern that opened more of the state’s backcountry also drew more people to it, and on Memorial Day that often meant the road, not the trail, became the first bottleneck.