Flooding 17

The night we duck-dived our way through the storm

I asked my sweetheart Jon to “fingerpaint” what we lived through in January, driving south over the Highway 17 mountain pass. One of the most dangerous roads in the country.

Our little survival spectacle looked exactly like this, except it wasn’t a rectangle. The water surrounded us from every side.

© Jon Bailiff, Highway 17 creek over the cab

We were going 45-50 mph — it’s a curvy mountain road— and the rain was constant all the way up to the Summit. But we were in our Ford 150 truck with new tires, so we felt intrepid.

“This isn’t the worst I’ve seen,” I said.

And then.

We hit a river of water that came over the cab— and kept coming. It kept coming.

One-one-thousand, two-one-thousand, three-one-thousand— maybe five seconds that stretched forever because we were blind, on a curve.

We DUCK-DIVED our way through a wall of water.

Imagine a muddy creek filling up your windshield — and this truck’s windshield is huge. There was nothing to see outside of it. The water golden mud and green.

Jon …