Wash­ing­ton State’s first Nation­al Park, which encom­pass­es the state’s tallest peak and one of its most endur­ing sym­bols, Mount Rainier, has become total­ly inac­ces­si­ble due to flood­ing and mud­slides that have blocked roads lead­ing to all of its entrances, includ­ing the famous Road to Par­adise:

Crews are work­ing to remove debris from land­slides cov­er­ing all roads to Mount Rainier Nation­al Park, but it’s unclear when access to the park will be available.

Both state Route 410 near Green­wa­ter and Route 706 in Ash­ford closed Thurs­day after relent­less rains trig­gered sev­er­al slides.

The week­end brought progress to the work on Route 410.

Three of four land­slides were cleared from a 20-mile stretch, with crews work­ing overnight to remove trees, mud and oth­er debris that spilled across all lanes, accord­ing to the Wash­ing­ton State Depart­ment of Transportation.

Although locals were grant­ed access Sun­day evening, a one-mile clo­sure remains between Mud Moun­tain Road and Greenwater.

And that’s not all. Not only are the two main high­ways lead­ing into the park closed, but there is also “no access to Car­bon Riv­er in the north­west cor­ner of the park due to a washout of Fair­fax For­est Reserve Road E. between Mowich Lake Road and Man­ley Moore Road on route to the Car­bon Riv­er Ranger Sta­tion,” the Nation­al Park Ser­vice reports in its Road Sta­tus report.

As a con­se­quence, it is not pos­si­ble to vis­it the park right now.

The park’s oth­er entrances are all closed for the win­ter, includ­ing the por­tions of State Route 410 that wind through Chi­nook and Cayuse Passes.

While WSDOT is doing its best to get State Route 410 cleaned up so that Crys­tal Moun­tain Ski Resort can reopen, State Route 706 is in such bad shape that work can­not even be under­tak­en to clear the debris right now. WSDOT explains:

Many trav­el­ers who vis­it Mount Rainier Nation­al Park often refer to State Route 706 east of Ash­ford as “the road to Paradise.”

But after sev­er­al days of tor­ren­tial rain, the road to Par­adise now resem­bles a mud­dy creek bed com­plete with large boul­ders, six-foot deep debris and sev­er­al streams in areas where they should­n’t be. In short, the road­way is a mess and the hill­side above is extreme­ly unsta­ble. That means the road, which first closed due to slides at 4 AM on Feb­ru­ary 6th, will remain closed with no time­frame for reopening.

While we know keep­ing the high­way closed is frus­trat­ing to res­i­dents and back­coun­try adven­tur­ers seek­ing the tran­quil­i­ty of one of our state’s most notable land­marks, until water from the dis­placed streams is redi­rect­ed, we can’t reopen the highway.

Besides the dam­age to State Route 706, there’s also dam­age to park roads and struc­tures, includ­ing at Park Head­quar­ters in the Long­mire His­toric Dis­trict:

Con­tin­ued flood­ing with­in park bound­aries was caus­ing dam­age to roads, trails, and his­toric struc­tures, includ­ing the Nation­al Park Inn at Long­mire and oth­er nation­al­ly-sig­nif­i­cant build­ings with­in the Long­mire Nation­al His­toric Land­mark Dis­trict. Sev­er­al build­ings in Long­mire had lost crit­i­cal sys­tems as sump pumps have been unable to keep up with water intru­sion, the park reported.

Crews are were eval­u­at­ing road and drainage sys­tem dam­age between the Nisqually entrance and Long­mire; how­ev­er, con­tin­u­ing pre­cip­i­ta­tion was ham­per­ing crew progress.

Ini­tial indi­ca­tions are that the park’s main entrance road had sus­tained some dam­age near Sun­shine Point (where a cat­a­stroph­ic flood washed out the entrance road in 2006).

There is an emer­gency route into Long­mire that is being used by park offi­cials to resup­ply the essen­tial per­son­nel stay­ing there, but this route can­not be used by the pub­lic. It will be some time before Mount Rainier can accept vis­i­tors again.