Fueled by torrential December rains, a nameless creek draining from Suiattle Mountain saw a landslide hurtle hip-high boulders, uproot trees and blow through a road.
It carved a roughly 70-foot-deep ravine, creating a 130-foot-wide gap in this Forest Service road, severing the Sauk-Suiattle Indian Tribe’s connection to its cemeteries and ancestral homelands, and closing another door to a major recreation corridor in the North Cascades.
The atmospheric rivers that fueled record flooding in Washington devastated some state highways and other major thoroughfares, prompting swift action at the state level. Meanwhile, rural and Indigenous communities await fixes and expect to live with the impacts of storms like this for years.
Forest roads like this one are critical to cultural practices and the area's recreation-dependent economy. The washout compounds delays in road maintenance and repairs in the area.
The Lower Suiattle River watershed is among the most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, such as extreme storms and flooding, according to a 2016 report by Conservation Northwest.
The Suiattle River Road was hit by one of the 73 landslides tallied so far across the state after the December atmospheric rivers.
The rain that doused the Cascades quickly saturated the soil, separating it from the rock below and triggering landslides all over, said Casey Hanell, the state geologist. Areas that had seen recent wildfires were even more vulnerable.
The U.S. Forest Service will apply for emergency relief to make the repairs. A damage assessment is ongoing, a Forest Service spokesperson said, and no repair timeline was available.
Restoring access to the Sauk-Suiattle Tribe’s cemeteries is a priority," a spokesperson wrote in an email. "We are actively working with the Tribe to assess options."
Many Sauk-Suiattle families were raised by the old growth and dripping moss of the Suiattle River Valley, an area the U.S. government once promised to the tribe.
After years of land dispossession, the federal government taking the valley for logging and other resource extraction, many of the tribe’s ancestors remain in the soil here.
“It means the world to us, to have access up there to our medicine: the plants, the roots, the berries, the deer, the elk, and our cedar and our buried loved ones,” said the tribe’s vice chair, Nino Maltos. “It's important that we make it up there.”
The Sauk-Suiattle nation and town of Darrington are working to adapt their ways of life to a changing climate. The tribe’s new casino, gym and other buildings around town don solar panels. Darrington is working to carry its logging lifestyle and culture into the future.
They’re feeling the impacts, from a dwindling population of mountain goats, to more frequent fires and bigger storms.
They say partners, like the Forest Service, are critical in the future of these places.
Cultural importance
A thick coat of muck covered the pavement, squelching beneath each step as Sauk-Suiattle tribal council members and the tribe’s historic preservation officer scanned the washout’s damage. The creek pulsed through the newfound channel dozens of feet below, racing toward the river in the twilight.
The tribe relies on this road out of necessity.
In the 1880s, non-Native settlers burned down a village of cedar longhouses on Sauk Prairie, near the confluence of the Sauk and Suiattle rivers.
The tribe's homelands were reduced to family allotments, and even that small patchwork of land was confiscated to clear the way for timber harvests. The Sauk-Suiattle people were left landless.
But cemeteries remained.
Maltos, the vice chair, said his great-grandfather, John Enick, gave one of his allotments along the Suiattle River so his people would have a burial place. Another tribal family’s cemetery nearby is used and cared for by the Moses family.
This river valley raises the next generations. Here, teachings are handed down: carefully pulling cedar for baskets and clothing, picking berries in the summers, said Mary Porter, the tribal historic preservation officer. Some tribal members return to exercise their hunting rights, or for spiritual practices.
Jan Mabee, 79, a Sauk-Suiattle elder and a descendant of the Moses family, said she and her siblings lived their early years on their family allotment along the Suiattle before moving to Darrington for school.
They were adopted by a white family, but she found her way back as an adult.
Today, she and her relatives return each spring to clear branches and other debris from the Moses family cemetery and hold a ceremony at their family allotment. It's like going home again, she said of the valley.
"I'm teaching my grandsons how to pull cedar and the blessings that we do before we take the cedar from the tree," Mabee said. "And we give offerings — our rituals that we learned as children — to be thankful for everything that grows in the forest that sustained us.
Councilmember Kevin Lenon, who also heads up the facilities department, rents equipment from the hardware store in town and hauls it up the Forest Service road to dig graves and care for the tribe's cemetery.
He and his crew cut a fire break to help safeguard the graves from wildfires. He carved a figure of an ancestor pulling a canoe, symbolizing going home. It is displayed atop a Forest Service sign at the entrance.
The tribe had to expand the cemetery. They were running out of space and had to ask the Forest Service for more acreage. Restoring the land to the tribe would take an act of Congress, Lenon said.
Maltos shared that the losses have mounted on the Sauk-Suiattle community in recent years, affecting many families. Elder Norma Joseph, a pivotal leader in the tribe and co-author of the tribe’s constitution, died in 2023.
His family has also seen losses.
His children’s mom had been pushed in front of a train in California in 2022, just days before he and some of his children were set to travel to the same area on tribal business. They visited the site where she was struck, and brought her remains home to be buried in the tribal cemetery.
Looking through old photos, Maltos recalled that his brother Mike helped carry their cousin Roger’s casket as they buried him in the cemetery in 2021.
Mike died in 2024.
Maltos lost a grandson in a drive-by shooting in Central Washington and another to a fentanyl overdose. He also buried his daughter, Charisma.
He recalls loading the caskets of his loved ones into the back of the tribe’s Toyota Sienna and escorting them to the cemetery.
“It can get you any time,” Maltos said, speaking of loss. “That's why we have concerns” about the road washout.
He worries for families who won’t be able to make it to the cemetery for their loved ones’ birthdays, anniversaries or regular visits.
While it’s not always possible, traditional protocols call for a burial within four days of a person’s death — no embalming. Pulling together drummers, speakers and organizing these funerals takes time, and it’s unclear what the process will be now.
“There’s a lot involved in the way we take care of our people and how we bury them,” Maltos said.
The tribe is working with the Forest Service on what an emergency solution could look like.
Preparing for the future
The newly carved ravine was only the beginning of the known damage here.
A Forest Service assessment of the impacts along the Suiattle River Road found a culvert blew out 10 miles down the road, debris flows came off Huckleberry Mountain from a wildfire burn scar and, about 15 miles in, the road partially collapsed into the Suiattle River. The Buck Creek Campground was damaged in the flood.
The damage cut off access to eight trailheads, two campgrounds, state, private and Forest Service timberlands and some of the tribe’s homelands.
The community is no stranger to destructive landslides. In 2014, a hillside collapsed and killed 43 people in nearby Oso, blocking Highway 530 for months.
The area’s economy has grown since then, boosted by visitors drawn to this scenic community nestled in the Cascades. Darrington Mayor Dan Rankin tallied on his hand new businesses in town, from one restaurant a decade ago to two, a brewery, two coffee houses, two espresso stands and a bakery coming soon.
Maintaining access to these wild places has become increasingly difficult, Rankin said. These weather events and barriers created as a result will continue to impact rural livelihoods and lifestyles.
Before 2003, Darrington had three portals to the Pacific Crest Trail: the 49 road, White Chuck Road and Suiattle River Road. Now there’s one.
The last time the Suiattle River Road washed out, it took a decade to repair. Rankin and the tribe are hoping they can lean on Congress to secure federal funding through the Emergency Relief for Federally Owned Roads Program.
“We're adapting to a quickly changing planet,” Rankin said. “The North Cascades is a volatile place. We have volcanoes. It's a young geological area, and whether it's forest fires or flooding or whatever comes next, we'll adapt.”
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