New entrance, more trails, ski hill upgrades: Park officials detail vision for Mount Spokane State Park

When Washington State Parks officials look into a crystal ball, they see a new grand entrance for Mount Spokane State Park.

They also see the Bear Creek Lodge being torn down, limited summer lift service at Mount Spokane Ski and Snowboard Park and a new bidirectional mountain bike trail paralleling the park’s main road.

All that and more is laid out in a document Washington State Parks released late last month as officials continue work on a new master plan for the 12,444-acre park at the southern end of the Selkirks.

Called a draft preferred alternative, the 18-page document lists the major projects officials envision for the next two decades at the park, including major construction undertakings like the new entrance and more bureaucratic work, like developing a forest health strategy.

It is not final, and no concrete plans for the projects listed in the document have been made. Washington State Parks staff will present the draft to the public at a meeting on Oct. 22 and take feedback.

A final version will be crafted in the coming months. That will become the foundation for the master plan, which is expected to be finalized next year.

Once that is done, officials will have a plan to guide the next 20 years of management at Spokane’s backyard mountain.

Melinda Wolfman, a parks planner with Washington State Parks, said the goal is to maintain the mountain’s status as a place for locals to hike, bike, pick berries and learn to ski.

“It’s going to retain a lot of its existing character,” Wolfman said.

Mount Spokane became a state park in 1927, beginning with the donation of about 1,400 acres. Additional donations and purchases helped it grow over the next 98 years. It is now Washington’s largest state park, and the only one that is home to a downhill ski resort.

In the summer, it is heaven for hikers, bikers and huckleberry pickers. In the winter, Nordic skiers make laps around the world -class trails near the top of the mountain and downhill skiers and snowboarders make use of the only ski resort within the borders of a state park.

Washington State Parks estimated there were more than 550,000 visitors at the park in 2024.

Work on the master plan began in 2024. Officials have framed it as setting the vision for the next 20 years of the park. This past June, they released two detailed options to the public for review. One focused on maintaining existing facilities, and the other leaned into building new facilities, expanding trails and boosting year-round visitation.

State Parks staff reviewed the comments and produced the draft preferred alternative. In the end, they chose items from both options and ended up with a long list of projects they would like to see done.

The document groups the projects into phases that roughly follow elevation, going from bottom to top, and it says the agency sees each phase lasting six years, or three legislative budget cycles.

Wolfman said plans are fairly firm for the first phase, and that the idea is that those projects would take place in the next three to five years.

Beyond that, the plans get fuzzier, but officials wanted to flag now what might come down the pike. For example: Among the possible projects in phase three is the development of up to five cabins or yurts on a part of the park known as Jerry’s House.

The top priority in the first phase, though, is an estimated $4 million project to build a new gateway for the park.

That would mean demolishing Bear Creek Lodge, the three-story rustic lodge and restaurant along the main road into the park.

Washington State Parks purchased the building and surrounding property in 2023. The purchase expanded the park’s boundary to the west, and at the time, the agency signaled the property could become part of a new grand entrance to the park – the existing gate is less than a half-mile away.

The fate of the building was uncertain, but it was clear from the start that parks officials thought it needed major work. The draft preferred alternative makes the agency’s preference clear: bulldoze and build a new facility to welcome people into the park.

Deciding what to do with the building was “probably one of the most important issues to solve in this process,” Wolfman said.

They heard during the public input process that many people did not want to see the lodge disappear. But Wolfman said it seemed the most important thing was simply having a public facility at the gateway to the park – a place to get information or buy food.

“I think the majority of folks … want something there, and not necessarily the building as is,” she said.

She also said demolishing the building and rebuilding appears to be a more efficient option than renovating the existing structure.

Trail projects are included in each of the phases. The top priority in the first phase would be a mountain-biking-only trail meant to parallel the park road from Entrance Trailhead to the Lower Selkirk Trailhead. Eventually, officials envision a new “round-the-mountain” trail at 5,000 feet of elevation.

Proposed upgrades for Mount Spokane Ski and Snowboard Park figure prominently in the plans. A project or two for the ski hill is included in each of the three phases, starting with a new chairlift that could be used in the summer.

Drawing big summer crowds to the ski hill, however, does not seem to be the plan. Only one chairlift replacement listed in the document is proposed to be replaced with a lift that could run in the summer, and the listing describes potential summer use as “limited.”

The document also says that the ski area – which is operated by a nonprofit separate from the state park – would fund its own upgrades rather than relying on state parks’ budget.