Winter - 2010

[Lamplighter]

NW Oregon is seeing high water and landslides from a major rain and wind storm.
Landslides are fairly common this time of year when the ground has been soaked.
Several roads in the Coastal and Cascade ranges are now closed, often in both directions.

The Sandy River drains west on Mt Hood, and is famous from journals
of Lewis and Clark (quicksand) and diaries of people on the Oregon Trail.
Yesterday, it came very close to setting a new record...

The fellows in this rig by the Wilson River were very lucky in the timing of this slide.
These are their comments from another forum.

We were at milepost 6. Pics were taken around 8. We hit the slide around 5:30. The dent in the rig was from the root ball behind us hitting the side I'm pretty sure. (we heard it hit us when the slide began). I jumped out of the rig after the initial slide and before the rig started moving out of the right lane and toward the river. The mud was almost waist deep but I managed to get back to solid ground only to look back and see the whole setup shifting again. I was quite happy when the water broke through the mud and the slide stopped! Dad would have been gone for sure.
<snip>
While we were workin on things, the telephone wires and poles started swaying something fierce. After a short walk west, we found another slide that made this one look like a dream. Huge trees fell and took out the power lines on the opposite side of the road. This new slide was over 100 yards wide and 20 foot tall....wicked. I wanted to climb up it for some pics but with the downed lines and given the terrain it just looked too unstable. They hadn't started on it when we got out at 11. My guess is the highway will be closed for a while.