Trails Clogged

Backpacking

The Inland Northwest isn’t the only region in which trail enthusiasts are suffering from a tough winter.

The deep snow, late spring, winter floods, landslides and countless downed trees are teaming up to delay high-country accesses by as much as a month.

Some roads and trails may not open or be cleared at all this season.

The heavy winter damage couldn’t have come at a more inopportune time for the Forest Service. Its Northwest Region, which contains about 20,000 miles of trails, had a trail maintenance backlog of about $55 million before the latest round of weather hit.

Money has been so tight in recent years that standard maintenance dropped from 75 percent of the trail system in 1994 to 30 percent by 1996.

Massive winter storms in February 1996 caused nearly $2 million worth of damage to the trail systems of the Mount Baker-Snoqualmie, Gifford Pinchot, Wenatchee, Okanogan and Olympic national forests in Washington.

That doesn’t count the weather hit the forests took in the winter of 1996-97, which is estimated at another $1.2 million in flooding and landslide damage.

On the Mount Baker-Snoqualmie Forest, trails will be about a month behind their usual openings, based on snowpack alone. Trails that usually open about the middle of June probably will open after the Fourth of July this year.

, DataTimes