North Cascades Highway still buried under thick debris in spots

Parts of Highway 20 through the North Cascades remained buried this week under as much as 10 feet of debris after a mudslide swept across the road earlier this month.

Cleanup efforts are ongoing but there is no plan yet for when the road could reopen.

Lauren Loebsack, a spokesperson for the Washington State Department of Transportation, said crews have encountered some “sizable rocks” that have slowed the clearing project, which involves the removal of an estimated 7,000 tons of material.

From the west, the closure begins at milepost 148 and extends to milepost 157, near the Easy Pass trailhead.

The slide happened Aug. 11 following heavy rain. A maintenance superintendent described it as “more like three large slides” within a mile or so of milepost 152, covering several hundred feet of the highway.

Thunderstorms this past weekend didn’t cause significant amounts of new mud to come down off the hillsides above the road, Loebsack said.

The 2,100-acre Easy fire, which dry lightning sparked in mid-July, has been burning in this area and previously caused closures along State Route 20 this summer. Loebsack said that while the slide was in the vicinity of the fire, it happened in an area that tends to be slide-prone.

These slides, she said, often start on federal land above the highway. The state has taken steps like building berms and catchment areas to keep debris from pouring onto the road, but there’s only so much they can do, she said.

The section where the slide happened is along a stretch of the road the state typically closes in November or December each year because heavy snow creates avalanche hazards. There’s no indication at this point that the road could remain blocked until the seasonal closure.

“We hope to be open soon,” Loebsack said.

The department has a crew of about 10 workers, along with three front-end loaders, two excavators, and four dump trucks to the site.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Forest Service said in a Tuesday update that firefighters had successfully held the Easy fire within its footprint and that crews were continuing to cool hotspots and secure lines up to 100 feet away from Highway 20.

State Route 20 is the northernmost route in Washington across the North Cascades and tops out at around 5,400 feet at Washington Pass. Even when the road reopens, Loebsack urged travelers to be alert and flexible while traveling through the corridor.

“This road goes through mountains, and conditions can change all the time,” she said. “I really encourage people to have a plan B when they’re considering a trip over the North Cascades.”