Colorado driver survives rockslide: "I'm still alive"

Mike Chavez of Grand Junction is still amazed at his good timing. 

"It was quite the ordeal," he told CBS Colorado. "One second ahead and the cab is crushed. One second behind, I would've hit boulders head-on."  

Chavez drove into a rockslide Tuesday in western Colorado - near Calamity Mesa, as luck would have it - and walked away. 

Chavez described rounding a corner on State Highway 141, a roadway he has driven once a week for a decade now. It was just after sunrise. He left Grand Junction an hour earlier en route to a real estate assignment near Nucla.

A dust cloud was the first sign of trouble.

The more concerning sign was a boulder taller than his truck bounding across the highway "like a bouncey ball." The boulder rolled in front of his pickup and dropped off the shoulder toward the Dolores River. 

Other boulders then struck the passenger side of Chavez's pickup. 

"Then a 2nd (sic) massive blow and then a third blow which caused all of the airbags to deploy which made the whole cab of the truck very dark," Chavez wrote in a social media post about the experience. "In that moment of feeling the impact from the rockslide I went into shock. I could still hear and feel more rocks coming down onto the road and some hitting the truck but nowhere like the other ones."

The truck was pushed into the other lane of traffic, the rear of it spun toward the river, too.

But it was driveable. Chavez, fearing other vehicles would hit him, maneuvered the truck beyond the slide around and parked on the shoulder. 

"After that, the reality of what happened started to sink in and the adrenaline started to wear off," Chavez wrote. "I stood there starting to feel the pain and at that moment I was very upset! Quite a bit of time went by before anyone came by which allowed me to realize that I was still alive and not dead."

As he set out orange cones to guide traffic through the area, Chavez heard what he thought were gunshots. He thought, "Why are people hunting ducks this early in the morning?"

It was later when a state trooper told him the sound was likely more rocks fracturing on the hillside above him. 

Chavez considers himself fortunate more boulders didn't come down while he was walking on the road. "How stupid was that!" he wrote. Only small debris fell from the hillside for four or five minutes after the initial slide. Some of those splashed into the river. Dust hung in the air for half an hour. 

The highway was closed for several hours, according to the Colorado State Patrol.

A Nucla ambulance crew driving back from a patient delivery in Grand Junction arrived on scene. Then a Montrose County sheriff's deputy. 

"Throughout the day I heard over and over how it could have been worse. Seems like the story of my life!" Chavez wrote. "As more and more emergency personnel showed up the more and more I realized how fortunate I was. It finally made sense why so many people where shocked at what had happened because none of the CDOT workers or the emergency personnel had never seen anyone ever be hit by a rockslide in all their years of living in the area."

Six hours later, a tow truck still hadn't shown up. So Chavez asked the deputy if he attempt to drive the truck home. The deputy gave his approval. Chavez cut away the deflated airbags and returned to Grand Junction. The trooper followed part of the way.

"During the drive all I can think of is how blessed I was to make it out alive and it made me think of a cowboy all shot up and his trusty steed getting him home," Chavez wrote. "At some point I needed some music for a distraction and I found a station on Sirius XM and the 2nd song that played was: What if today was the only day I have left. Is that a coincidence? I don't believe so!"

Days later, Chavez told CBS Colorado his back is still sore and his truck is under repair. 

"It's a Chevy. It's built like a rock," he said, with irony. "That thing took a beating but it drove straight all the way. The truck wasn't squirrely at all."  

He also cherishes every sunrise, even if he finds himself driving in a canyon again.

"You never know. It's Colorado, right? Things can change in a moment. But I'm still alive."