[jaysway]

I'm posting this late, but I toured up Tumalo Mountain outside of Bend on the last day of March for sunrise. The snow was horrible (crusty before the sun had time to warm it up), but the views were great. The inbounds skiing at Bachelor that weekend was fantastic. Bend is a paradise, we always joke that it's basically Eagleton from Parks & Rec .

The drive back to Seattle from Bend was wild. It was a clear day, so we took the longer route through the desert. Somewhere on 97 south of Toppenish, we were two cars behind a head-on collision at speed when a car ahead of us pulled into the lane of oncoming traffic (one lane in each direction, 65mph speed limit I believe) and hit a car going the opposite direction. We stopped along with a number of others to act as first responders until help arrived 35 minutes later, although the whole ordeal took 3 hours as they had to shut down the highway to extract the guy in the Volvo, then allow a helicopter to arrive to airlift him, and then they had to take scene photos. Thankfully, only two cars were involved, each with a single driver, and both of them survived. The guy driving the car that caused the accident was in rough shape and had to be helicoptered out. The woman he ran into was miraculously okay - I helped her along with another guy who stopped, the other bystanders attended to the more hurt driver and helped to direct traffic. So many firefighters and police commented that Subaru ought to use this woman's story in their commercials, they were all surprised by how hard the hit was and how unharmed the woman seemed to be. We don't know why this happened, but please drive safely.

Car of the guy who drifted into oncoming traffic

Car of the woman that the guy hit

[Now I Fly]

Harsh way to end what looks like a scenic trip!

[Stefan]

Thank you for acting as first responders. That was wonderful with the circumstances you encountered.

[Eric Hansen]

Thanks for the trip report, great pics and good karma on the highway. High speed traffic on 2 lane blacktop can get intense. The closing speed of vehicles going opposite directions is 130mph or so, and things happen pretty darn fast when someone gets impatient. Years back I was on such a highway when someone pulled out to pass coming at me. They were a ways out but it had potential to be bad, a multi car pileup. As I hit the brakes I checked my rear view mirror and the woman behind me was pulling off the road, bailing out into the grass shoulder. Smart! I never forgot that.