Small step on the big trail
Published 7:18 pm Friday, April 24, 2009
If you’re up for hiking 1,200 miles from Glacier National Park in Montana to Cape Alava on the northwest tip of the Olympic Peninsula, the newly designated Pacific Northwest National Scenic Trail is for you.
It’s been more than 30 years in the making, linking many existing trails and a few roads, finally achieving national scenic status with President Barack Obama’s signing of the Public Lands Bill on March 30.
It was first conceived in the 1970s by Ron Strickland, who organized the Pacific Northwest Trail Association, with a governing board and a core of enthusiastic volunteers who helped maintain and map the routes and worked to push the proposal through Congress. Now it’s up to you to get out there and enjoy it.
The trail has ups and downs from sea level to Rocky Mountain highs with breathtaking scenery and, well, some annoying traffic along populated stretches that connect the wilder areas. Hiking from Keystone to Port Townsend is problematic. Take the ferry.
Much of the trail is at Alpine level and still neck-deep in snow, but lower areas can give you a sampling of the variety right now, including beach sections on Whidbey Island and the hills near Anacortes and Bellingham.
Which is what we set out to do last weekend, taking in some areas close to home, on Whidbey Island and in Skagit County.
Much of the route in Skagit County follows roads, so we opted for a segment that cuts across the flanks of Mount Erie. It’s a typical easy woodland trail, pretty but unnotable, passing by Whistle Lake and connecting to the Mount Erie road, about 1.8 miles. The guidebook highly recommends the side trip on Trail 216 to the summit of Erie, a 2-mile round-trip detour, but well worth the workout. It will be the best view you get on this short segment of the PNT.
Speaking of the Pacific Northwest Trail Guide, get one if you are at all serious about exploring the routes. There’s no signage to speak of right now (I have seen some around Blanchard Mountain near Bellingham), and you really need a program to connect the dots in some of these places. For instance, there are dozens of trails crisscrossing the area around Mount Erie.
The narration and maps are arranged from east to west, so if you want to go the other direction, you’ll have to parse it out.
After the Erie jaunt, we drove down Whidbey Island to the beach access at Fort Ebey State Park to rejoin the trail. The Whidbey route is less of a route-finding problem, because it is nearly all on the westside beaches, from Deception Pass to Fort Casey and the Keystone ferry. There is a detour on roads around the naval air station and up to a bluff trail near the south end of the route.
Also be aware that in some areas, notably from south of Joseph Whidbey State Park to Fort Ebey, you should hike only when the tide is out.
We walked the rocky beach a couple of miles south from Fort Ebey, enjoying the views out to the Strait of Juan de Fuca and the Olympic Mountains. Plenty of sea birds were about, and we even happened on a pair of sea otters, um, cavorting among the rocks.
Once you get more than a few hundred yards away from the park accesses, the beach becomes pretty solitary. Or so the otters thought, I suppose.
We’re looking forward to seeing higher routes of the PNT as the snow retreats, and we’ll leave the roads to those few dedicated hikers aiming to log the whole 1,200 miles.
Ron Ramey: 425-339-3443, ramey@heraldnet.com.
Learn more
Pacific Northwest Trail Association 24854 Charles Jones Memorial Circle, Unit No. 4 North Cascades Gateway Center Sedro-Woolley, WA 98284 Phone: 877-854-9415 E-mail: pnt@pnt.org, www.pnt.org
Pacific Northwest Trail Guide, by Ron Strickland and Ted Hitzroth, $24. Order through the association (contact information above). The guide also can be ordered through amazon.com, but no cheaper than the association’s price.
About the association’s founder: www.ronstrickland.com
For good descriptions of the trail and tips for hiking: gorp.away.com/gorp/activity/hiking/features/hik_pnt.htm
