Wild Sky Wilderness supporters take a victory lap

INDEX — A rushing river and jagged Cascade peaks were visible in the background. The sun had just come out.

After nine years of meetings, compromises and political battles won and lost, wilderness enthusiasts gathered in the small town of Index on Friday to celebrate the long-sought creation of the Wild Sky Wilderness.

“Oh my God, can you believe this?” U.S. Sen. Patty Murray said to the cheers of a crowd of more than 100 people gathered in the back yard of a home next to the North Fork Skykomish River.

Murray, U.S. Rep. Rick Larsen and many others who worked for years on the designation set aside the day to enjoy their victory. On May 8, the measure was signed into law by President Bush, after it finally passed both houses of Congress, following many tries. It is the first new wilderness created in Washington since 1984.

“Wild at last, wild at last, thank God almighty, it’s wild at last,” Larsen said to more cheers.

Mike Town of the Friends of the Wild Sky was one of about 60 people who in 1999 during a retreat at Lake Wenatchee first hatched the idea for a new wilderness area. Town, who used to live near Index and who teaches environmental science at Redmond High School, said the group wanted a place to teach people what wilderness is.

“My jaw muscles are tired because I can’t stop smiling today,” said Town, 49, who now lives in Duvall.

Later in 1999, the idea was pitched to Murray. On May 30, 2001 — seven years to the day before Friday’s celebration — Democrats Murray and Larsen took their first hike into the area.

“This struck me as the best place to make our mark,” Murray said. “I wanted a place where families could come.”

The designation sets aside 106,577 acres north of U.S. 2 where logging, road building, motorized vehicles and other industrial uses are banned.

The designation preserves mountains, forests and streams for recreational uses such as hiking, horseback riding, hunting, fishing and rafting.

The area includes ragged mountain tops, valleys and old-growth forest near salmon-spawning streams. Much of the wilderness is of low elevation, allowing easy access for recreation while protecting wildlife habitat, proponents have said.

On Friday, Murray and Larsen took a walk through the woods prior to the celebration, to get a look up the river at the mountains of Wild Sky. The walk was a short, easy one through Forks of the Sky State Park.

By contrast, the path to getting the wilderness designation approved was steep and rugged.

“There were a lot of switchbacks on the trail to get the Wild Sky Wilderness preserved forever,” Larsen said.

The measure passed the Senate four different times and the U.S. House of Representatives twice, Larsen said, only to fail in the other chamber each time until the last.

The logjam began to loosen after the 2006 congressional elections. Rep. Richard Pombo, R-Calif., chairman of a key House committee who opposed the plan, lost his bid for re-election.

Recently, with bipartisan help from Sen. Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, Murray rounded up 60 votes in the Senate to overcome a threatened filibuster by Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Oklahoma.

From the beginning, the plan involved getting many different groups together — not only proponents, but some who weren’t so enthusiastic about the idea. These included farmers, ranchers, east Snohomish County politicians and motorized recreation advocates, who have argued that restrictions on federal land are unfair to the public that owns them.

Some were never convinced.

“Any wilderness that locks people out of using the land and is not actually pristine, cannot be managed for fire control and disease infestation,” said Dave Hurwitz, chairman of the Snowmobile Alliance of Western States.

According to Hurwitz, more than 107 million acres in the United States is already set aside for wilderness.

“How much is enough?” he asked.

Numerous changes were made to the Wild Sky plan. Originally set at 130,000 acres, an attempt to reduce it to 93,000 acres failed, with the final compromise set at the amount approved.

Ultimately, land was set aside to accommodate snowmobilers and off-road vehicle enthusiasts, and there will be a wheelchair access trail.

Timber interests put up surprisingly little opposition, Murray said, because much of the area is steep and difficult to log.

On the environmental and community side, hundreds of people helped support the cause over the years, Town said. About five or six were with the effort from beginning to end, he said.

One of them was Bob Hubbard, 56, of Index, whose extensive knowledge of the area gained on hikes led to the inclusion of an area with trees up to 800 years old. That area, in the upper reaches of the north fork of the Skykomish, is known as Hubbard’s Grove.

To promote the cause, “there were two or three years I walked everyone I could down through there,” Hubbard said.

Many others were recognized by speakers at the event for their contributions, including the late U.S. Rep. Jennifer Dunn, the Belle­vue Republican whose district reached up into the small King County portion of Wild Sky.

The Beckler Peak trailhead will be named after her, Mark Gray of the U.S. Forest Service said.

When the speeches were done, a new wooden sign announcing entry to the Wild Sky Wilderness was unveiled.

“It’s absolutely fabulous,” Index resident Etta Hunter said. “It’s wonderful for the community, we have waited so many years for it to happen”