Police have issued a warning to drivers following “dangerous parking” on the A82 near Glencoe ski centre.
Enforcement action is to be taken against motorists who caused problems at the weekend and a senior officer said any vehicles parked in this way in the future would be seized.
Around 200 vehicles parked along the Fort William to Glasgow road reducing the busy trunk road to single carriageway.
Police were then called to the scene and officers had to direct the traffic in a contra flow system to relieve congestion.
They also took the details of vehicles that were blocking the road and they today said enforcement action would be taken where road traffic offences had been committed.
South Highland Area Commander Chief Inspector Colin Gough said: “The inconsiderate and quite frankly dangerous actions of those who parked on one of Scotland’s busiest main routes posed significant risk and considerable disruption for other road users over the weekend.
“Officers were required to manage traffic at the scene, taking them away from other duties.
“In addition to following up on road traffic offences recorded yesterday, we will be taking robust action by arranging for the recovery of any vehicles left on the A82 in future.”
He added that they were liaising with Glencoe Mountain Resort management, Bear Scotland and the local authority to prevent the situation from recurring.
Resort managing director Andy Meldrum said : “There were two separate issues. On Saturday, we had staff working all night clearing the car park and the access road, which belong to Highland Council but is gritted by Bear Scotland.
“Unfortunately the gritter we were promised on Saturday morning didn’t turn up before our customers started arriving.
“This meant people couldn’t get up the access road and mile long queues developed in both directions on the A82.”
He added that, as soon as police arrived and called Bear in to grit the access road, the traffic jams cleared.
Mr Meldrum explained that on Sunday the problem had been the sheer volume of people turning up at the resort.
He said: “We only had about 80% of the parking spaces clear because there were 5m (16ft) high piles of snow on the other 20%.
“Unfortunately, when people had driven three to four hours to ski, after several weeks of blizzards, some of them chose to abandon their cars despite our pleas not to do so.”
A spokeswoman for Bear Scotland said the agency had an agreement with Highland Council to undertake “precautionary salt treatments only” on the ski centre access.
She said: “Due to the adverse weather conditions affecting the north west, our main concern was to keep open the A82 and maintain access to Glencoe.
“Once this was achieved, one of our vehicles went to treat the ski centre at 9.28am on the morning of January 17.”