FRISCO, Colorado (AP) — A pileup involving as many as 75 vehicles on snowy Interstate 70 shut down the state’s main east-west route over Vail Pass Monday, killing at least one person and injuring several others, officials said.

The wreck stranded travelers who scrambled to find hotel rooms in the mountain communities on either side of highway closure.

Authorities spent the evening busing drivers caught in the pileup to nearby towns and clearing the dozens of tangled vehicles from the westbound lanes of the highway.

Colorado State Patrol Trooper Gilbert Sullivan said one person was killed among the dozens of crashes.

“We have up to 60 to 75 cars involved,” Sullivan said.

Sullivan said the accident happened during snowy weather Monday afternoon in the westbound lanes about a mile west of the summit. He said it appeared a semitrailer jackknifed and caused the original crash.

“It sounds like that started the whole chain of events,” Sullivan said.

Kenny Griffin was one of the last people to make it over Vail Pass when he saw the crash.

Griffin said he saw six semitrailers— two of them jackknifed — at the front of the wreck with at least a dozen of cars jammed in between. There appeared to be a second group of crashes farther behind as made his way past the line of crashes, he said, with cars upside-down and pinned under one another.

Transportation officials reopened the eastbound lanes of the interstate by 8 p.m., but the state patrol’s Master Trooper Ron Watkins said it would take hours to clear the wrecked vehicles in the westbound lanes.

“This could be an all-nighter,” Watkins said.

Griffin, who made it back from Beaver Creek to work the front desk at the Frisco Ramada Limited, was turning away a steady stream of stranded travelers hoping for a hotel room to weather the delays.

Six patients were transported to St. Anthony’s Summit Medical Center near Breckenridge, about 20 miles away. Two women there were in critical condition, anther woman and a boy were in serious condition. The other two patients were treated and discharged.

At least 16 people with broken bones, bruises, and scrapes were transported to Vail Valley Medical Center.