LAKE CITY — Epic amounts of snow blanketed nearby peaks and unprecedented spring avalanches pushed entire hillsides into the river valleys outside their town, but Lake City residents are no longer panicked that their town will be washed away in a flood.

They’re preparing for the worst-case scenario from Mother Nature, but more than anything they’re anxious that the flood warnings scared away the remote town’s only source of income: summer tourists.

“The town feels empty,” said Janet Potter, a retiree who has lived in Lake City since 1997. She has seen tree-sized logs float by her riverside home this spring, but it’s the absence of visitors that stands out, she said.

Although state officials believe the worst flood risk has been avoided, travelers have remained hesitant to visit the rural community in southwestern Colorado. Instead of anglers and hikers, a contingent of state and federal emergency managers descended upon the town of 400.

Lake City, the only town in remote Hinsdale County, is one of many rural Colorado communities working to prepare for potential flooding as the winter’s epic snowpack begins to melt. Mountain towns across the state are preparing sandbags and warning visitors about high water.

Over the past two years, residents in the southwestern mountains have dealt with drought, fire, avalanche and, now, the threat of flood. For those who rely on tourists’ dollars every summer, dealing with the swings have made an unpredictable industry even more precarious.

“It’s kind of walking that fine line between being safe and not scaring away visitors,” said Abby Leeper, a communications manager at the Colorado Tourism Office.

Although numerous mountain towns have prepared for high water, Lake City’s predicament was particularly dire and threatened lives before the emergency crews arrived, state officials said.

More than 60 avalanches, some more than a half-mile wide, pushed mountainsides of trees, boulders and snow to the floors of the two river valleys surrounding the town, which sits at the confluence of Henson Creek and the Lake Fork of the Gunnison River. As the winter’s bloated snowpack — about 300 percent of average in the San Juan Mountains that surround Lake City — began to melt quickly, the high water was strong enough to push the debris downstream.

Authorities feared a wall of water could build if the logs jammed or blocked one of the two historic dams. If the debris jam or dam were to break, the surge of water sent downstream could send feet of water into some of the low-lying areas of town within 15 minutes.

At a town meeting Tuesday, officials estimated there was a 10 percent chance that the worst-case scenario could happen if weather conditions aligned perfectly and predicted that high water could begin as early as this weekend. Federal, state and local officials have worked in the city for a few weeks to mitigate the chance of such a surge, including partially deconstructing one of the dams.

“We could have a pretty substantial flood event,” said Michael Davis, spokesman for the group of agencies working in Hinsdale County. “But we’re working hard to make sure that doesn’t happen. We’re planning for the worst and hoping for the best.”

State and federal personnel started leaving town Friday because they felt confident the town was prepared. That optimism spread to many locals this past week who felt hopeful that a catastrophic flood won’t happen. They’re preparing just in case, they said.

“What else can you do?” said Roxa Hutchins, owner of Sportsman’s BBQ Station near the confluence of the rivers. “Mother Nature, you can’t control her.”

But now Lake City has another problem: How do you rent out cabins, Jeeps and fishing equipment when a giant sign at the entrance to your town blinks warnings about potential floods?

Flood warning

Lake City residents knew the avalanches around their town of about 400 people this past winter were unprecedented. The avalanches in February and March caused voluntary evacuations and flattened the Hinsdale County sheriff’s house outside town.

But it wasn’t until crews in April started exploring the two mountain roads along the river valleys that the size of the avalanches became apparent. Piles of centuries-old trees, snow and boulders covered sections of roads up to a half-mile long.

“That’s really when we started realizing that we were going to need help,” said Sandy Hines, administrative assistant for Hinsdale County.

The close-knit community of retirees, summer vacationers from Texas and young families panicked at first, Lake City Mayor Bruce Vierheller said.

On May 6, Gov. Jared Polis declared an emergency in the town. Soon after, state and federal responders flocked to Lake City and set up headquarters in the town’s medical building.

On Monday, emergency management personnel scurried around the makeshift command center. The room’s walls were plastered with weather reports, charts and evacuation route maps. In a corner, a group of men watched a computer with a blue line charting current water flows on the two rivers. A precipitous drop on one of the graphs sent a crew scrambling up the mountain passes to look for a potential jam.

Mitigation efforts have been broad. Personnel from the group of agencies built a berm along one of the rivers in town. They partially destroyed one of the historic dams so water could flow better. They also placed additional sensors along the rivers so the flows could be monitored in real time. They helped organize the filling and deployment of more than 18,000 sandbags around town to protect important buildings. Crews surrounded the most vulnerable homes near the confluence with 3,000-pound mega sandbags.

The preparation has quelled most of the initial fear, Vierheller said.

“Folks now are a lot more calm,” he said.

Despite recent optimism that Lake City would escape the worst effects, volunteers heaved sand bags Tuesday outside the Hinsdale County Museum as Grant Houston, editor of the Lake City Silver World newspaper and founder of the museum, looked on.

For decades, the museum has been open seven days a week during the summer, he said. This year, however, it never opened its doors to the public. Just before Memorial Day, museum leaders learned about the flood threat and switched from setting up exhibits to packing away the museum’s wares for safe storage.

The museum’s most precious items — including a dollhouse created in the late 1800s by the town’s infamous cannibal hiking guide, Alfred Packer — were sent to Gunnison for safekeeping. The rest of the collection of hundreds of thousands of artifacts, documents and photos dating to 1874 was placed in eight 40-foot-long shipping containers on high ground near town.

“In preservation, you’re racing against the clock because Mother Nature will erase it all,” Houston said.

At least one piece of Hinsdale County history expected to be destroyed was saved.

Engineers recommended that the town demolish the 129-year-old Hidden Treasure Dam because they worried that avalanche debris could block the dam and cause it to fail, sending a rush of water toward town. Contractors used a remote-controlled jackhammer suspended on a sling to chip away at the top of the dam and small explosives to blast away the bottom.

But engineers later determined the new gaps at the top and the bottom were big enough to avoid a jam.

“We still have a historic dam up there, but we don’t have a dam that causes concerns of safety to this town,” Hinsdale County Sheriff Justin Casey said at a town meeting Tuesday to cheers from the crowd.

Many locals in town expressed optimism last week that the floods wouldn’t be as catastrophic as predicted.

Mike Harbuck owns an RV campground in an area near the rivers that could flood. But he’s not laying sand bags or wrapping his buildings in plastic. If the waters come, he plans on putting his medication in his truck and driving to higher ground.

“I’m optimistic like that,” he said in a Texas drawl. “I’m not planning on it happening.”

“Precipitation whiplash”

Along with Lake City, many other towns in southern Colorado are dealing with raging waters and the effects of avalanches.

Signs along the Rio Grande on Wednesday prohibited anybody — or any boat — from entering the raging water. Along Colorado 149, the river overtook tree trunks and washed out boat ramps, but left houses untouched. Campgrounds and some roads in the area remained closed.

Mineral and Rio Grande counties, as well as sections of Conejos and Saguache counties, remained on flood watch Thursday. Officials in Chaffee and Summit counties, as well as the towns of Silverthorne, Buena Vista, Avon and Ouray, have opened sandbag stations.

The Colorado Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management also is monitoring burn scars from previous wildfires for flash flooding, said spokeswoman Micki Trost.

In Creede, about 50 miles southeast of Lake City, waters have taken over the floodplain but haven’t threatened any structures, said Kathleen Murphy, director of the town’s chamber of commerce. The city worked last week to widen a concrete flume that directs water through town. A road north of town washed out after avalanche debris built up, releasing a surge of water. Some lower-elevation hiking trails were flooded as well.

The closure of the river has affected local businesses that rely on the water, such as fishing guides and a rafting company, she said.

“It’s been a little bit of a hindrance, but it’s not forever,” Murphy said.

After Colorado’s widespread flooding in 2013, the state tourism office started offering services and programs for communities impacted by natural disasters to help them maintain their tourism, Leeper said.

Sometimes, as in the case of Lake City, members from the office will travel to a town impacted by an incident to help businesses and local government maintain a safe tourism industry. For example, the office allowed Alamosa officials use of the Colorado Tourism Office’s Instagram account — which has more than 145,000 followers — to promote safe activities during the Spring Creek wildfire last year.

“Summer seems to be the prime season for natural disasters,” Leeper said. “It’s really part of living in the mountain West.”

Despite the flood threat, the surge of water is a much-needed cure for years of extreme drought in the region. Farmers fought to grow their crops. Wells dried up. Dry trees and grasses fell to beetles and fires. Experts expected the region would have had to wait years before returning to normal.

Instead, one winter of heavy snow pulled the region out of the dry spell. Peter Bennett Goble, climatologist and drought specialist at the Colorado Climate Center, called the sudden change “precipitation whiplash.”

“When you build a nice robust snowpack like this and melt it all slowly like this, the results are not all positive, as you’re seeing in Lake City, but there are upsides,” he said. “The cleanest way for us to dig out of a drought is with a high snowpack year.”

It’s unclear whether climate change will have an effect on the state’s precipitation, Goble said. Scientists do know that the shift will shorten Colorado’s winters and make it more prone to drought. They also expect rainstorms to dump more water in shorter amounts of time, which could lead to more mudslides and flash floods.

Moving forward

The mood was jovial Tuesday night as a few hundred people filled a Lake City gymnasium for a town meeting about flood preparation. State officials and the sheriff cracked jokes while explaining the threat and progress.

The town likely will have high water and minor flooding on the riverbanks, said Cory Stark, a field manager with the state Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management who led the interagency response team. But the chance of significant, widespread flooding was minimal.

Now, businesses have to recover from the sales they missed during the flood preparation. Business owners have struggled to attract tourists this year and many said they’ve received numerous cancellations from people worried about flooding. Many of the hotels and motels are booked months in advance, she said, but this year many still had vacancies in mid-June.

“Last season was go, go, go all summer,” said Katrina Kent-Menzies, executive director of the Lake City Chamber of Commerce. “This year kinda blows.”

Since Memorial Day, Jeff Guthmiller has rented out only four vehicles from his business, Lake City Auto & Sports Center. Usually, he’s rented more than 40 at this time.

“Our entire lifeline in this town is tourism,” he said. “There’s nothing else.”

Harbuck, the RV campground owner, said he’d lost about a third of his business so far. On Monday, his park was mostly empty.

The uncertainty has been the worst part, Kent-Menzies said. Even the people who come every summer are putting off their trips.

Some Lake City residents already are looking forward to the whole ordeal being finished, though the winter’s avalanches will remain a problem for years. The bare paths they created are now more susceptible to mudslides and more avalanches, though there will be less debris.

But the town is resilient, Leeper said. It has rallied together to look ahead to plans for when the flood threat passes and is working on ways to extend its typical tourist season into the fall, she said. Some in town are even considering offering tours to see the massive piles of avalanche debris.

One resident had only one question after the meeting on Tuesday.

“What do we do with the sandbags when this is all over?” she asked.