August 12, 2013 – I just received an email from a friend asking if we were on the North Cascades Highway this weekend. Umm, yes, Saturday. He sent me an email from a mailing list he is on, check this out!
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Hi all,
I don’t know what happened, but the update I was ready to send disappeared somewhere into hyperspace and so the “much later than I wanted” SR 20 closure update is now even later. Sorry.
The North Cascades Highway closed Saturday night (officially) at 9:30 p.m. (even though, it was probably closed an hour or so earlier – it just took that long for news of 2 mud slides to get from the drivers to the WSP to us from that area that has no cell phone coverage). The slides happened a few miles west of Rainy Pass. Yes, there were a couple vehicles trapped between the slides, but no one got hurt and both parties got out safely, (sorry, I don’t have the details yet about the VW or the pickup and camper they were driving.)
Anyway, by mid day on Sunday, instead of two slides, We were dealing with 8 of them. The largest (at the time was a quarter mile long and 25 feet deep- could be bigger, now.) It’s going to take days, if not longer to reopen. We know that we’re going to have to have help in the form of private contractors with the larger equipment and the people it’s going to take to get this job done.
Despite the difficulties in communication (even a satellite phone doesn’t work in a lightning storm up there), and the distances involved, The maintenance supervisor (Don Becker who also oversees the spring reopenings) took some pictures that we now have posted on Flickr:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/wsdot/sets/72157635037166187/with/9496492120/
Until the hillsides stabilize and our environmental, geotechnical and maintenance experts can put together a clean up plan (They’re working to do that right now), don’t plan on using the North Cascades to get between the Skagit and Methow Valleys.
I guess if there’s any good news, it’s that we put in those extra closure gates two years ago, so from the east side, you can drive all the way to Rainy Pass, accessing any of the campgrounds, trailheads, etc. before encountering a barricade across the roadway.
Pass this along to whomever you’d like, so any help you can provide to get the word to folks who planned to use SR 20 is appreciated.
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At the tail end of a nine day motorcycle trip, we left Winthrop at about 3pm Saturday and arrived in Concrete at somewhere around 5:30pm, after a number of scenic stops along the way. A major rainstorm had passed through the previous night and there were more thunderstorms and a flash flood warning in the forecast, but we got through before the weather hit again, though it was literally right behind us as we entered Mount Vernon, about the time this happened, so we were just a few hours ahead of it.
Terrible that it happened, glad we made it through, grateful no one was hurt.