Workers chipped out access Saturday around a massive mud slide on state Highway 112 that isolated Neah Bay and cleared another slide on the opposite side of the Olympic Peninsula that had fully blocked U.S. Highway 101 near Hoodsport.
By sunset Saturday, one lane for alternating traffic was open on 112, said Don Clotfelter, Olympic Region maintenance manager for the state Department of Transportation.
State workers excavated from the east side of the slide while Makah tribal members used their equipment on the west side to clear the road at Rasmussen Creek, which was buried at 6 p.m. Friday in some 3,000 to 4,000 cubic yards of mud, boulders and trees.
“It’s one of the bigger ones we’ve had in a number of years,” Clotfelter said, adding that “along that corridor historically are landslides.”
The slide made going home again an adventure for many.
That included a horde of high school basketball fans who watched their boys and girls varsity teams beat their arch-rivals in Clallam Bay before learning that the only paved highway access into Neah Bay was completely blocked.
Bruch and Bruch of Port Angeles will finish clearing the job, beginning Sunday and working through the holiday weekend to cart off between 300 and 400 truck loads of soil, Clotfelter said.
All lanes of Highway 101 near Lake Cushman Road — state highway 119 — in Mason County were cleared by 4:35 p.m. Saturday after a mud slide blocked both lanes at 11:35 a.m. Friday.
Highway 101 is the only road linking communities on the western shore of Hood Canal.
Crews were later able to clear one lane through the 100-yard-wide slide area on Friday.
The slides were the latest in a series that have plagued Western Washington for the last two weeks of storms.
A mudslide Thursday along the main railroad line near Everett prompted a suspension of passenger rail service between Seattle and Vancouver, British Columbia, until Saturday.
And a mudslide in Sumner will keep the West Valley Highway closed through at least Tuesday morning, officials said.
Landslide warning in effect
With more rain forecast to fall on already sodden ground, the National Weather Service has issued a landslide warning in effect through Monday for much of the North Olympic Peninsula.
The warning especially mentions danger in the Admiralty Inlet and Hood Canal area and all along the Strait of Juan de Fuca.
“Given how saturated the soils are, and the fact that we are receiving steady rain over the next 24 hours, we feel the landslide warning will continue,” said Dennis D’Amico, meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Seattle.
A flood watch also is effect in Clallam and Jefferson counties through Monday. D’Amico didn’t anticipate that the alert would be raised to the level of a warning on the Peninsula.
“But we are still going to be seeing enough rain that the rivers will be rising,” he added.
A moisture-laden storm system from the southwest hit the area on Saturday, and was expected to drop from one-half inch to 2 inches of rain in populated areas.
The Olympic Mountains were expected to get more rain — from 3 to 6 inches — with snow levels maybe as high as 9,000 feet, D’Amico said.
That will aggravate the already shaky snowpack conditions.
The Northwest Avalanche Center issued an avalanche warning above 4,000 feet through Sunday.
The usual 30-minute drive from Clallam Bay to Neah Bay took an hour and 45 minutes Friday night, said Andrea Winck, a Makah Forestry Enterprise accountant who was in Clallam Bay to see her daughter, Courtney, play with the girls varsity team.
“We were part of a convoy,” she said.
At least 30 vehicles traveled back to Neah Bay on an old logging road, which the owners permit to be used in emergencies.
“The road’s pretty good until you get to a section close to the reservation where active logging is going on,” where it was boggy with mud and badly potholed, Winck said.
Clallam Bay friends loaned the Wincks a Dodge Ram to negotiate the back road, and they loaded it with others.
“When it comes to this kind of thing, people really pull together,” Wincks said.
“That’s when you feel the close-knit relationships in this community, when you have an emergency like that.”
Meri Parker didn’t even try to get home.
The Neah Bay Chamber of Commerce president had driven to Costco near Sequim earlier that day.
“And I drove all the way to the mud slide last night and couldn’t get in,” she said Saturday.
She turned around and stayed with family in Port Angeles.
But on the way, she had an idea.
Parker phoned the Red Lion Hotel and suggested a “mud slide special” for people unable to get home, adding that if the hotel would offer a reduced rate, “I could put out 30 text messages by cell phone.”
The hotel embraced the suggestion. Terra Horton, front office manager for the Red Lion, said that it offered a 35 percent discount to those who needed a room.
There were few takers, but Horton was glad the hotel made the offer.
“I couldn’t imagine being stranded,” she said.
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Managing Editor/News Leah Leach can be reached at 360-417-3531 or leah.leach@peninsuladailynews.com.
