Posted by David Sherman on Tuesday, April 20, 2004 at 11:57PM :
In Reply to: Re: Looks like Stevens Pass posted by Keith in Washington on Tuesday, April 20, 2004 at 8:00PM :
If you go up there, you can still walk through the old tunnel. It's about 3 miles long. It starts at the former town of Wellington, which has long since been demolished. You can also walk down the tracks to the West and go under the double-track concrete snowsheds that were built after the Wellington slide (avalanche) came down through heavy timber and swept a stalled passenger train into the Tye river resulting in the worst railroad accident in US history. The train was buried deep in the snow and most of it and the bodies stayed there till spring. The "Wellington slide" was so infamous, that the railroad changed the name of the town to "Tye" so that "Wellington" wouldn't appear on their timetables.
I had a neighbor who used to trap up there during the depression and they'd catch rides on the train and hike through the old tunnel back when the trains still ran through it. He said they had a pretty good idea of the train schedule and they knew where there were pockets in the walls that were made so you could take a speeder off the tracks if need be, and they'd wait in one of those pockets if a train came through while they were in the tunnel. In those days the Great Northern Hot Springs Hotel was at the bottom of that final grade at the town of Scenic, but was demolished when they built the new tunnel. After that, they used the hot spring water for the showers in the bunkhouse at the section crew quarters. All that's long gone, but the hot water still runs out about 1000' up on the mountainside above Scenic, and people now call it "Scenic Hot Springs".
I haven't been along the old railroad grade for years, but I've heard that some hiking club has brushed out the tracks from the Cascade Tunnel west around Windy Point and to Marten Creek, which is where the horseshoe tunnel was, but that tunnel was blasted shut or collapsed years ago. The "new" tunnel is 7 miles long and eliminates all switchbacks.
A pretty good forest has grown up where the Wellington slide came down, but the broken-off stumps of the timber that was swept away in the slide.