State reopens road to isolated Diablo

DIABLO — The Department of Transportation has opened a portion of the North Cascades Highway to Diablo, after a massive rock slide isolated the tiny Seattle City Light company town for six weeks.

Some residents grabbed their pets, extra clothes and Christmas presents and headed out of town to visit friends and relatives after the road was opened Thursday. Others couldn’t wait to get back in.

Gary Moody, a City Light electrician, said he’s had little company over the past six weeks aside from his tropical fish. His wife’s job as a teacher at Concrete High School kept her on the other side of the slide.

"My wife’s really ready to be able to put her feet up on her own couch and sit in her own glider chair," Moody said.

Diablo residents, most of whom work on the utility’s dams on the Skagit River, are used to the highway’s closure every winter, which cuts them off from Eastern Washington. But in early November, 3 million cubic yards of rock came rushing down a mountainside and blocked the roadway west of town, near Newhalem.

That meant the only access was by helicopter. Some of the town’s few dozen families were split, and some children couldn’t make it to school.

State officials plan to keep the road open from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., with one car passing under the 2,000-foot slide at a time, assisted by two flaggers and one spotter watching for rock movement, Transportation spokeswoman Jamie Holter said Friday. Officials may close the road if weather gets bad; heavy rains could make the slope unstable, and snowstorms this time of year regularly impede traffic.

The decision to open the road came after workers were able to analyze several weeks of data from monitoring instruments, some of which had to be placed by contractors dangling from a helicopter. So far, they haven’t detected significant movement that would threaten the highway.

The Transportation Department hopes to install an electronic warning system this weekend, allowing the state to establish a more predictable schedule for opening the road from Diablo to Newhalem, Holter said.

"We understand that they’re really stressed out, they’ve been up there a really long time and it’s Christmas," she said. "Our goal all along has been to try to open that road. We just couldn’t do it safely. Up until now nothing has been predictable."

Jeff Martin, a boat operator whose wife, Ginny, was the first person lined up Thursday morning for a run to Costco, said he doesn’t mind the isolation that comes with living in such a beautiful spot in the North Cascades.

But still, he added: "It’s hard to explain the weird feeling knowing you can’t leave. There’s a little bit of apprehension there."

"Come back in three months and it’ll be like ‘The Shining,’ " Martin said, referring to the Jack Nicholson movie about the deranged caretaker of a remote mountain hotel.