Going off the rails

On Saturday, December 14th, we left home in the early morning and drove north to Squamish, a town about halfway between our place and Whistler. We had tickets with Squamish’s Railway Museum for a Christmas-themed ride on a heritage train.

Between the train ride and our drive up and back, it was supposed to be a three-hour tour.

Yes, a three. hour. tour. (Maybe you can guess where this is going?)

The train ride was a meandering, unmemorable experience. We made the most of it, but as we disembarked, we were eager to get home to lunch and to our dogs, who had been alone all morning. (Tilly was also in her crate and we knew she’d be ready to stretch her legs.)

As we began the drive down the Sea to Sky Highway, we saw a digital sign saying the highway was closed at Brunswick Beach (about halfway home for us). Thinking that couldn’t possibly be true, we anxiously drove on until we arrived at a roadblock.

It turned out that, about half an hour into our train ride, a landslide had crashed down near Lions Bay. A massive debris trail of mud, rocks, and entire trees went barrelling through the highway’s concrete barriers and was now blocking all four lanes of traffic, preventing vehicles from moving in either direction.

If you haven’t driven it before, this stretch of Sea to Sky Highway is mostly ocean on one side and cliff walls on the other. There is no such thing as a detour here. The only alternate way home for us would involve taking the highway back north of Whistler, a route that this time of year travels through snowy mountain passes (with spotty cell service), lasts at least 6-7 hours, and really requires 4-wheel drive. We were not about to attempt it in the Prius.

So we began frantically calling to find a locksmith (to essentially break into our place) and someone to meet them and help with the dogs. This process proved surprisingly stressful because—news to me—dogs don’t naturally warrant people’s willingness to change weekend plans. Eventually, we managed to arrange for at least a dinnertime visit (in exchange for owing one couple our gratitude for the next eternity) (seriously, there are no words for how stressed we were) (especially as Tilly has to be given medication around the same time every day!).

Initially, the folks at the roadblock said it would be at least five hours before any lanes re-opened. As the day passed and daylight faded, so did our hope of getting home before Sunday. At one point, the rumours were flying that cleanup was going to take “several days”; apparently such scenarios had happened before, including one incident that took nearly two weeks(!) to resolve. We hardly knew what to do with ourselves. Beyond the challenges of arranging for longer-term dog care—and may all the gods bless the co-worker who had already agreed to pop in Sunday morning—where were we simply going to sleep?

All the (very limited) hotel rooms in Squamish were booked, and the town was offering nowhere else for people to go. We could have driven the hour up to Whistler, as the resort had the decency to open up one hotel’s ballroom for folks who were stranded. (North Vancouver did similar at a recreation centre on the south side of the landslide; it was just you, Squamish, that couldn’t be bothered.) However, we feared trapping ourselves even farther away, especially as a snowfall warning had been issued for the highway north of Squamish.

In the end, we hopped from one indoor place to another, lingering as long as we could at coffee shops, a restaurant, and retail outlets while the evening wore on. It was impossible to stay outside comfortably for any length of time, as the weather was windy, rainy, and near freezing—plus we had dressed for a train ride, not an outdoor excursion!

When our last retail visit was forced to end at closing time, we bought ourselves cheap pajamas, blankets, and pillows (ringing up with at least a dozen other people doing the same). Then we hunkered down in the back of the Prius to spend the night in the luxury of a Wal-Mart parking lot.

Shane managed to sleep. I was wide awake worrying about the dogs, checking Shane’s phone every fifteen minutes for updates, and regretting every single decision that had led to that point. Those cold, bleak hours—shivering under the overly bright parking lot lights, listening to wild wind and rain batter the car, wondering if it would be hours, days, or weeks(?!) before we made it home—will probably haunt me for a long time.

And, sure, it wasn’t the end of the world. We had, after all, missed the landslide hitting our car. We were well-fed and dry and together while navigating the chaos. (We would later learn a house with two occupants had sadly been in the path of the landslide.) In that moment, though, the feeling of sheer powerlessness and borderline panic overwhelmed every other possible emotion.

So at 5:15 on Sunday morning, when I refreshed the screen for the hundredth time and saw that the highway was unexpectedly open again, our excitement and relief flooded that frosty car like a brilliant sunrise. We stopped for a quick caffeine and bathroom break, then hit the highway home. It was a slow drive in the dark, winding our way along curves, through rain, and around puddles. But we were steadily moving south again!

When we passed the site of the landslide, the giant machines that had handled debris removal were still standing on silent watch. I gave thanks aloud to them and their departed crew for clearing a path—those folks definitely endured the hardest and dreariest night of us all.

Finally, nearly a full 24 hours after we departed, we arrived back home.

The dogs had had a couple accidents in the house, but we could hardly care. Reuniting with them and knowing that they were okay—confused and tired and hungry, yes, but okay—that we had made it home okay, and that nothing impassable was looming between us anymore…well, it felt like our very own Christmas miracle.

There is absolutely no other gift I could ask for this year.