A friend of mine who's attending the meetings up there says:

In brief, there are lots of variables. The Stillaguamish River bed in some areas is now 10 feet higher than
before the slide. Will the rebuilt highway need to have dikes? Will it be graded higher? Will the road be
designed before construction begins or will there be a design and build contract? How much of the old
road is intact and usable? Short answer: After victim recovery is complete, it could take 1 to 3 months to
get the highway open (considerably less time than estimates I’ve heard previously).

In the meantime, the livelihoods of a couple of thousand people depend on that route, so a temporary route is critical. The current plan is to route around the slide area on a series of forest and private roads, tracks really, one way with a pilot car, 10 MPH, 16% grades, hairpin bends, no guardrails, the works. Daylight hours only. Must be a resident or landowner in the affected area. This should be in place any day now.

Live monitoring of new river gauges should be in place soon as well. People up there are really worried about new flooding, log dams giving way, etc. The river may not be done yet.

@1 Wow, wonder what roads/tracks they're using. According to the topos, there are no alternate routes in the valley itself, except maybe the powerline road.

Are they going to use logging roads high on the valley walls?

I know that City Light opened up their transmission corridor road. I can't image it's much, but at least it's probably fairly flat and direct, since the corridor parallels the slide.

Disaster Serendipity
My mind drifts to Oso every night seeing news footage of Korean ferry boat death toll.

@2, @3, part of it is the powerline road. However most of the power service roads used by Seattle City Light are easements, not owned by them, so they have to get permission from many landowners, which is instantly forthcoming but still combersome to do.

Great photos B-Kiley... and keep on keeping OSO Strong

I of course have not been up that way since the slide, but how much of the current highway is destroyed/buried? I thought it was only about a mile. Then again, I thought CL owned all that land the transmission lines are on. There's a reason I don't work in the real estate department.

Still amazing and awful in scope.

Very moving, thank you for this report.