The booms echoing through Colorado's high country each winter are getting a high-tech upgrade. For years, crews with the Colorado Department of Transportation used howitzer cannons along I-70 to blast avalanche paths near the Eisenhower and Johnson Tunnels, in order to trigger small slides before they could threaten drivers below.

Cannon blasts to trigger avalanches in Colorado's mountains are being replaced with a remotely controlled system. CBS

Now those cannon blasts are a thing of the past, at least up in the northern mountains.

In place of artillery, CDOT has installed three new remote avalanche control systems on Bethel Mountain, built by Wyssen Avalanche Control. The $800,000 project uses towers loaded with precision-placed explosives, 12 charges each, all of which can be deto

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