Colorado State Patrol has identified the driver of a CDOT plow truck involved in a fatal crash on Interstate 70 on Thursday, Jan. 29. Troopers responded to the fatal crash around 8:53 a.m. on the snow-covered surface of eastbound Interstate 70 at mile point 218 near Herman Gulch and east of the Eisenhower-Johnson Memorial Tunnels. The crash involved a snow plow, a sprinter van carrying a hockey team from California and two additional passenger vehicles.

Preliminary information from a Colorado State Patrol investigation shows that the CDOT plow truck was traveling westbound on Interstate 70 when the driver lost control. The plow truck traveled through the median, breaking through the cable rail and into the eastbound lanes. It then collided with a Toyota Tacoma that was traveling in the eastbound lanes.

Following impact, the Toyota went through the median and struck a BMW traveling the westbound lanes. The plow continued eastbound and struck a Ford transit van that was traveling in the eastbound lanes, resulting in the van going down an embankment. The CDOT plow came to rest on the shoulder.

According to a Colorado State Patrol news release, the plow truck’s driver was 29-year-old Littleton resident Colton A. Weidman. The Toyota Tacoma was driven by a Silverthorne resident, while the BMW was driven by a Denver resident. The Toyota Tacoma had a 65 year old female passenger, according to Colorado State patrol.

The driver of the van, which was carrying 10 occupants, was declared dead at the scene, and at least seven passenger, including four juveniles, were transported from the scene, according to Colorado State Patrol. One injured juvenile was transported by helicopter to an area trauma center with critical injuries, and one adult male refused to be transported. No other involved parties were transported from the scene. 

The crash remains under investigation by the Colorado State Patrol Vehicular Crimes Unit.

PARK CITY, UTAH — The evening before the Sundance Film Festival kicked off its final appearance in Utah, Amy Redford stood on a temporary stage in a temporary gathering space and addressed a roomful of people.

“My dad loved this place and its people,” she said of her father, Robert Redford, and the state where, for more than 40 years, the Sundance Institute — with its series of labs for emerging filmmakers — and the festival have shaped the film industry, and to some extent American culture.

Boulder City Council approves $17.3 million incentives package for Sundance

Robert Redford died last September at 89, and his absence, as well as his vision, permeated this installment of the first festival without the Sundance Kid turned Elder Statesman. It’s hard to decide if it was fitting or a poetic injustice that Redford will not be following the festival to Colorado, a state he knew well, where Sundance will move in January 2027.

Colorado, though, is a state he knew well. Redford had, at one time, wanted to start his film festival in Colorado before heading to Utah. “Even though Bob Redford enjoyed a successful acting and directing career, he was never just content to rest on those laurels. He believed that with space to create and experiment, independent artists were poised to have a tremendous impact,” Ebs Burnough, chair of the board of trustees, told a roomful of film writers and journalists.

“And of course, he was right. To this day, artists who get their start at the Sundance Institute and at the film festival go on to shape storytelling, independent cinema, and our collective culture. And that has never mattered more than it does in this moment, when we need the empathy and inspiration and new perspectives independent storytelling provides,” he added.

Place is a funny thing. The wilderness of Utah, coupled with the intimacy of the ski town, served and shaped the festival well for decades — and vice versa. Now it moves to a new location at the foot of the Flatirons and adjacent to the Rockies. Boulder is beautiful, but as a city, it has a wholly different aura. And it has a university and a tech corridor.

Fortunately, Sundance hired the Boulder-based producer Paula DuPré Pesmen (“The Cove,” “Chasing Ice,” “Porcelain War”) to help envision the transition.

In the meantime, here are four things (there’s plenty more) to know about the globally renowned festival that concludes Sunday and the one headed to Colorado in January 2027.

Colorado represented

Colorado was represented a couple of times this year. “See You When I See You,” a Jay Duplass-directed film, premiered at Sundance. It is based on beloved Denver stand-up Adam Cayton-Holland’s 2018 book, “Tragedy Plus Time: A Tragi-Comic Memoir,“ about grief and his sister’s suicide. It stars David Duchovny, Hope Davis and Cooper Raiff and Kaitlyn Dever as siblings.