Couple stranded in popular Washington tourist town documents record snowfall on TikTok
Brittany Clark-Hargraves and her husband traveled to a small Bavarian-style town in Washington just as a record-breaking snowstorm started making it’s way to the area.
They planned a three-day getaway on Jan. 5 to Leavenworth — a popular Christmas town nestled in the Cascade Range — to reconnect and “slow down.”
But the couple from Olympia wasn’t expecting to get snowed in for nearly four days as the entire town shut down, including all the roads leading out of it.
“We went there to relax and just kind of go for an adventure,” Clark-Hargraves told McClatchy News. “So that’s what we got. We got a really big adventure.”
Clark-Hargraves and her husband, Cory Hargraves, documented their experience on the social media platform TikTok.
Their 20-second video posted out of boredom shows the snowy town lit up with Christmas lights on their first night before the storm hit.
Then within 12 hours, snow blanketed the streets and buried vehicles including their truck, forcing the town to shut down, the video shows.
And the snow didn’t stop falling.
Leavenworth Mayor Carl Florea declared a state of emergency on Jan. 7 after about 48 inches of snow covered across the picturesque town within 48 hours.
The emergency allowed the city to call in the National Guard to help clear snow from driveways and streets, check on residents and deliver food. However, the National Guard didn’t arrive until Jan. 10.
But at the time, Clark-Hargraves and her husband didn’t know the town was shut down until they began trekking in the snow to find food, she said.
They found a food market open, grabbed some snacks for the hotel and then had a burger at a bar that had opened briefly, she said.
The city was nothing like they had seen before. Even locals hadn’t seen that much snow before, Clark-Hargraves recalled some residents saying.
“It’s like a bustling little town,” she said. “So it was kind of weird that nobody was walking around and that we got to see it just completely empty.”
Although Clark-Hargraves and her husband’s plans changed for their vacation, she said they still had a “cool experience.” And they eventually got out of the town after staying one night past their original plan.
“I think this is a memory we’re going to remember forever,” she said. “Everybody was so nice and accommodating to us. And the community, you could really feel like they came together for each other.”
This story was originally published January 11, 2022 at 3:42 PM with the headline "Couple stranded in popular Washington tourist town documents record snowfall on TikTok."
