Holden Village reopening awaits federal funding for flooding, mudslide repairs; slim staff maintains grounds in interim

Holden Village, a Lutheran retreat center deep in Chelan County’s North Cascades, might be closed for more than a year after winter landslides shut down access to the remote location.

While the organization waits for the federal government to coordinate road repairs, a skeleton staff is working to improve Holden Village and keep the community alive through remote events.

The primary way to access Holden Village is a boat ride followed by a bus trip up Forest Service Road 8301, which was rendered unusable after flooding and mudslides closed the road in mid-December. Staff were evacuated by helicopter, and the village was closed while the leadership team scrambled to deal with the emergency.

Now, it’s just a waiting game.

Repairs to FSR 8301 could cost around $20 million, according to Chelan County Sheriff Mike Morrison. While the federal funding source hasn’t been identified, Co-Director Elise Peterson said no one has indicated that funding wouldn’t be found.

The road is in the middle of an active avalanche area, however, so damage can’t be assessed and repairs can’t begin until warmer weather arrives, Peterson added.

“They have started the process and now it’s just a matter of everything going through,” Peterson said of the United States Forest Service. “We don’t really know what the timeline could be.”

The USFS did not respond to FāVS’ request for comment.

Holden Village will almost certainly remain closed this summer, with the potential for limited staff traffic in the fall. It might not reopen for guests until late 2027.

It’s “a long process that we have no control over,” Peterson said.

In the meantime, about 10 staff returned to Holden Village on Jan. 1 to clean it up and maintain the grounds. About 16 staff members are working remotely on fundraising and virtual events, Peterson said.

This year Holden Village is bringing back its virtual prayer around the world event, which will be the last week of April, according to a newsletter. Individuals and congregations will be able to virtually join the handful of in-person staff in a Lutheran vespers service written in the 1980s by Marty Haugen while he was at Holden Village.

Peterson said she hopes virtual participation” will at least capture some of the essence of Holden.”

Impact of the closure

Holden Village typically welcomes 4,000 to 5,000 guests per year, Peterson said.

“This is going to be a big impact for people who regularly come to Holden,” she added. While there are other Lutheran summer camps in the region, Peterson said they tend to be catered to youth or families.

It’s a lot more difficult to find a place that offers a multigenerational experience, she added.

“Holden is a place people come for retreat, for renewal, for respite,” Peterson said. “Given everything that is happening in the world right now, the fact that people can’t get there is heartbreaking.”

The closure also impacted staff, who scrambled to find housing and jobs.

Holden Village typically has between 70 to 150 staff members depending on the season, Peterson said.

Niko Hernes, 25, was planning on working at Holden Village this winter, carrying on the legacy from her mother and father.

“Then the landslides happened,” Hernes said. “I was pretty sad because Holden Village has been such an important part of my life.”

Throughout her childhood, the retreat center was a place to be in the wilderness, connect with her family and disconnect from technology. In fact, Holden Village was so important to her family that they spread her mothers ashes there in 2022.

“I wish she was there to be there, one more time, to see Holden Village,” Hernes said.

Although Hernes’ work plans have been totally upended by the road closure, she said she’s viewing this as a chance to be flexible.

“Maybe God’s telling me it’s not my time to work there,” she said.

In addition to dealing with landslides, Holden Village dealt with a strain on its relationships with local organizations after three former staff members and volunteers returned to the village around Christmas and attempted to make repairs on their own.

The three people used an excavator owned by Rio Tinto, a mining company working to clean up an abandoned mine near Holden Village, according to a newsletter.

The USFS was looking into the situation, the newsletter said.

Morrison, the Chelan County Sheriff, said he didn’t hold the situation against Holden Village.

“We have a great relationship with them,” Morrison said.

Learning to wait

At this point, Peterson said there is nothing that Holden Village can do but wait for the federal government to fix the road.

“For someone who likes to control things, in some ways it is a complete nightmare,” she said, adding that this was not something she expected to happen in the first six months of her position as co-director.

“On a personal level, it’s been this amazing lesson in the reality of being human, which is that nothing is certain,” she said.

Peterson, who stepped into leadership at Holden Village in September with her husband Bjørn Peterson, said she’s working to push back the fear and anxiety and recognize that uncertainty is part of life.

“This is an important moment for us to realize that Holden Village is about more than the place,” she said. “If the community can’t exist out of the place, now you’re starting to have a whole other identity crisis.

While she waits, Peterson said Holden Village is leaning on its strong financial reserves and the support of the community.

Holden Village already exceeded this year’s fundraising goal, and Peterson didn’t think the outpouring of support would stop anytime soon.

“To me, the financial resilience of this community is actually one thing I’ve never had any anxiety about, not just with money but with volunteers,” she said. “I have complete faith that we will be able to weather this financially, and hopefully get to the other side and make some improvements to our system and even our facilities, and feel like we’re walking into a better Holden than we left it.”

This story was written in partnership with FāVS News, a nonprofit newsroom covering faith and values in the Inland Northwest.