TOUTLE, Wash. —
Daniel Goins thought he was only going to hike for an hour and then drive home when he parked at the Johnston Ridge Observatory on May 14.
On Friday, he was finally able to retrieve his car—exactly two months later.
A landslide destroyed a small section of State Route 504, also known as the Spirit Mountain Memorial Highway, which is the road to and from the observatory on Mount St. Helens, leaving Goins’ car – and six others – stranded on the mountain.
“I’m pretty stoked,” he said before Washington Department of Transportation led him up to retrieve his Mitsubishi Lancer. “I’m a little worried that it’s not going to start but we’ll see how it goes.”
Goins and the other drivers were forced to spend the night at the observatory after the slide and were then flown out by helicopter the following day.
His worries about the condition of his car proved to be unfounded, though. After the procession of vehicle owners crossed over the temporary bypass up to the observatory, everything went smoothly.
“I got in my car and it started right up,” he said. “Seemed like there was no problem at all, everyone had their cars going. It was a pretty quick easy trip.”
Robert Cornejo Garcia was the first one try to come down the mountain back on May 14. He came around a bend in the road and nearly drove into the landslide as it was happening.
“I hit the corner and I was going like 40,” he said. “You lose control of your front wheels a little bit. I came within like five or ten yards of driving into it.”
At first he didn’t know what he was seeing, but his ears told the story.
“It’s trees snapping like pencils,” he said. “It sounds like cars crashing over and over again.”
The bypass, two large culverts topped by compacted gravel, is only temporary and the road is still closed to the public. Paul Mason, with the department of transportation, said they hope to have the temporary road open within a year.
A more permanent fix, though, will take much longer. Mason said they still need to bore holes in the ground to determine its stability and a permanent fix is still likely three to five years out.
For the drivers though, Friday was a day to celebrate getting their cars back much sooner than many of them had anticipated.
“I was worried that it was going to be a year out, maybe two years out,” said Goins, noting that he’d gotten a new car just a few days before officials told him when he’d be getting his old one back.
But despite it all – the stranded cars and the night spent at the observatory – Cornejo Garcia still thought of the whole experience as a best case scenario.
“I was thinking If I leave a little earlier, maybe it hits me. If I come a little later and it’s dark, I don’t see it. And the next day there was supposed to be kids coming up for a field trip,” he said. “At the end of the day, a car is a car.”