Rainier National Park Tries to Balance Access and Nature as It Rebuilds
MOUNT RAINIER NATIONAL PARK, Wash., March 7 — The big loud trucks rumble upstream, past where the Sunshine Point campground stood before the flood, beyond the historic park buildings that came so close to being swept away when the Nisqually River blew out its banks in November.
Then, at a bend where there used to be a wall of evergreens and now there is an unbroken view of the Nisqually, the trucks unload their cargo. Boulders that weigh 15,000 pounds or more tumble out and over the precipice that was once the shoulder of the road and is now the new riverbank.
The goal is to replace the earth beneath the road that the river washed away after a record 18 inches of rain fell in two days. But for all the push to reopen parts of Mount Rainer National Park in time for spring, there is also a sense that the repairs, whether here on a main road or on a log bridge deep in the backcountry, is about more than recovering from one brutal historic storm. It is about guarding against the mystery of what might come next.
“Seven or eight tons,� Jim Gilmore, an owner of the Columbia Granite Quarry, said of the stones that his company has hauled to the park this week from 60 miles away in Vail, Wash. “With the velocity of the waters and the climate change, that’s the only thing that holds up anymore.�
There has always been flooding here driven by big rains and glacial runoff, and diagnosing the causes of natural disasters is particularly complicated when questions about climate change add tension to so many debates. But officials here say the damage to popular routes through the park is unprecedented.
Parts of roads are washed out. The 93-mile Wonderland Trail in the backcountry lost at least 10 footbridges to flooding, though the winter snow probably hides much more damage. Kautz Creek in the southwestern corner of the park changed course, flowing a few hundred feet to the east of where it had been.
“Do we just move the sign up the road?� Lee Taylor, who runs two visitors’ centers, asked as she watched the creek churn out of the woods and into a culvert installed in a hasty effort to keep the water from rushing over a road. “We don’t really know where this creek is going to stay yet.�
Kautz Creek has altered its course before, including decades ago, when sediment from glaciers rushed downstream. But other nearby streams, close to the Van Trump and Pyramid Glaciers, have no record of releasing debris until the last few years, said Paul M. Kennard, the geomorphologist at the park.
Near the historic park headquarters at Longmire, sediment released from retreating glaciers has in recent years been piling up on the Nisqually bed at about a foot a year. After the November flood, heavy machinery was brought in to build new riverbanks to protect the old log buildings.
“All the glaciers are by far at their historic minimum,� Mr. Kennard said. “The rivers are going to have less capacity to hold floods, and the storms seem to be getting stronger.
“Long term, the prognosis isn’t that good. What I’m most interested in is trying to figure out what the rivers are going to throw at us in the near future, particularly these debris flows. I think it’s something that’s really kind of snuck up on us.�
The 14,410-foot summit of Mount Rainier and its shoulders loom across the Puget Sound region, where it is known simply as the Mountain. The park, established in 1899, is the nation’s fifth oldest. The summit is the fifth highest in the lower 48 states.
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Park Tries to Balance Access and Nature as It Rebuilds
