Colorado foothills communities weather the storm, wait for power to be restored

As of Sunday night, United Power reported about 700 customers in Colorado's foothills were still without power following snow and wind storms this past weekend.

The poor conditions certainly impacted roads and made the local Base Camp convenience store one of the busiest places in town.

Employee Bert Treto showed some empty shelves, explaining, "You can see all our Pepsis are gone... We usually have a pretty good stock and they've got us down pretty thin."

For those who live in Golden Gate Canyon, Base Camp is one of the closest grocery stores for miles. Treto said Base Camp even temporarily ran out of gas at their pump because of the demand.

"A lot of people came for gas. They could fuel their generators for a couple of days," Treto said.

But rather than gas, regular customer Terry Donley was stocking up on snacks. Adding that after losing power this weekend, he planned to get a generator.

"I lost a couple of trees that went across my driveway. I had to cut it with a chainsaw so that I could get in and out to my house," Donley said.

Trees fell across the canyon this weekend as United Power crews worked to keep up with downed lines due to this week's high winds. Crews that spoke with CBS Colorado on Sunday said they started working long hours on Thursday and expected to work well into Sunday night.

One resident in the canyon told CBS Colorado, "I'm watching the trees bend, listening to the house creek like the ship at sea."

And while temperatures are expected to rise this week, the mountain community is ready to weather any storm.

"You know, it's a pretty tight community, and as I said, hearty," Donley said.

Keep up to date with current outages and restoration times on Xcel and United Power's outage maps.