Rafting company holds off on trips past Oso mudslide

OSO — A rafting company has halted plans to offer sight-seeing trips along the North Fork Stillaguamish River past the Oso mudslide.

The trips, timed around the one-year mark since the slide on March 22, prompted criticism from survivors, victims’ families and locals, said Dave “Captain Dave” Button, 70, the owner of Pacific Northwest Float Trips based in Burlington.

He’ll revisit the idea after attending a survivors support group next week, where he was invited to speak, he said. If survivors adamantly are against it, Button will revise the trips to stop short of the disaster zone, he said.

“It’s still a proposal,” he said. “It’s not poured in cement that we’re going to do that.”

Button, who used to teach and coach in Darrington, says he ran similar trips in the 1980s after Mount St. Helens erupted, without complaints. That was before social media, though, he said.

After hearing from those affected by the slide, he also decided to donate all proceeds from the $90-per-person trips to a charity in Oso for relief efforts. Previously he had planned to donate a portion of the proceeds.

The outcry over the rafting trips touched on the rawness of the grief in the Stillaguamish Valley as the one-year mark approaches. The slide killed 43 people, and everyone affected is in a different stage of recovery. Many struggle with unforgiven mortgages, post-traumatic stress and a future full of unknowns. Many in the valley consider the mudslide area sacred ground.

Rikki King: 425-339-3449; rking@heraldnet.com.

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