4 years after flood, hikers contend with damaged Pacific Crest Trail

DARRINGTON — After 2,500 miles of hiking the length of California, Oregon and partway through Washington on the Pacific Crest National Scenic Trail, Dan Fenn had reached a crossroad.

As he headed from Stevens Pass toward Glacier Peak, a detour sign along the trail directed hikers off the well-groomed PCT and onto a narrow, overgrown trail heading east. The 50-mile detour would take him around a flood-ravaged section of the main trail closed since November 2003.

The detour route would take him through the Napeequa and Chiwawa valleys in Chelan County. After reading the trail conditions posted by the U.S. Forest Service, he headed up the PCT to face whatever challenges lay ahead.

For the past four summers, hikers who have completed the entire 2,650-mile trek on the trail from Mexico to Canada have all faced the same obstacle. The Forest Service has not enforced the trail closure, and many hikers choose to take on the damaged trail rather than the steep, brushy and poorly maintained detour that poses challenges of its own.

The 45-mile section of the PCT that curves around the western side of 10,541-foot Glacier Peak was devastated by a winter storm that dropped 10 inches of rain in one day and caused record flooding on rivers that bisect the trail. Eight bridges and one stream ford were washed away, along with several hundred feet of trail and numerous roads and trails that access it.

“The damage was so bad in some places that bridge locations don’t look anything like what they used to,” said Mike Dawson, trail operations director for the Pacific Crest Trail Association, a nonprofit group that works to protect and promote the National Scenic Trail.

“There are several sections where, if you walk up on the old trails where a bridge had been, the bed of the creek is several feet lower and banks are less stable,” he added. “In other places, the locations of bridges and crossings were buried under debris.”

No repair work was done on the trail for three years as the Mt. Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest waited for federal funding to replace bridges and rebuild pathways. After funding was secure, the agency awarded bids last year, and work finally began this summer on five bridges and several sections of trail.

However, the largest of the bridges, which crossed the Suiattle River, is not scheduled to be replaced until September 2008. The Forest Service hopes to have the trail reopened by next fall, just in time for hikers who started their journey in California to reach the Glacier Peak area, said Gary Paull, wilderness and trails coordinator for the Mt. Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest.

The extended closure of the trail is believed to be the longest in the PCT’s history, Dawson said. The PCT and the Appalachian Trail were designated the first National Scenic Trails in 1968.

He said the organization is eager to get the trail west of Glacier Peak repaired because of safety concerns, both for hikers who are using it anyway and for those who take the detour.

“We’re quite concerned about it,” he said. “The trail crossings on the Suiattle can be very dangerous.”

The closed section of trail has had no maintenance for the last four years, so it is littered with fallen trees, he said.

He added that the detour trails are not maintained to PCT standards and are “much more steep, much more abrupt and considerably less wide. The route is much more difficult.”

Several through-hikers have recounted their experiences on the PCT and the detour route in Washington in online journals posted on the Pacific Crest Trail Association’s Website.

“This was bushwhacking cross country up the steepest hillside imaginable,” one hiker wrote of the detour route in the Napeequa Valley. “It was tough and scary. I slipped several times. I’ve done stuff like this before. It isn’t for the faint of heart.”

Some hiking organizations estimate that 90 percent of the PCT hikers are bypassing the detour and sticking to the main trail. About 200 hikers a year complete the entire length of the trail.

Paull said that while he was visiting one of the trail repair sites this summer, he met up with a couple who tried to hike through the damaged area but were forced back because it was too difficult.

Craig Stanton, a hiker from New Zealand who completed the trail in late September, wrote that he’d been warned by other hikers about the Glacier Peak trail section. He wrote that trees as wide as 7 feet were down across the trail, and that some had fallen in piles “making a up-down-around climbing frame that slowed us down considerably.”

He described the Suiattle River, which he crossed on a downed log, as “very fast and deep enough to swallow a hiker whole.”

Just six days from the end of his 5½-month journey, Fenn reached the detour sign at the Indian Creek Trail junction. After deciding to stay on the main trail, Fenn wrote in his online journal, he encountered two hikers heading south who had successfully navigated the section.

They crossed several of the newly built bridges and were feeling confident in their decision. They found their way through two areas where the trail was completely washed away. They crossed Milk Creek on the steel girders that were all that remained of the old bridge. Then they crossed the Suiattle River on a log, which Fenn said made him a “tad nervous.”

“This crossing was perhaps the most anticipated part of the trail and to have made it over safely was a BIG relief,” he wrote.

Dawson said he is eager to get the Glacier Peak section of the PCT fixed and reopened. He described it as one of the most scenic sections of the entire trail, and some hikers rank it second only to the John Muir section of the trail in California for scenic beauty.

“It’s spectacular,” Dawson said. “It is drop-dead spectacular, with open alpine meadows and sweeping views. That’s why people are so adamant about getting the route moved back to the west side of Glacier Peak.”

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Information from: The Wenatchee World, http://www.wenworld.com

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