Naneum-Wilson

This hike starts out at 5,000 feet on the signed Naneum Meadows trail (#1389) on the west side of the road and begins by crossing a burned-out forest that is coming back to life with abundant young conifers, shrubs and wildflowers. 

The trail soon begins to climb gently on a couple of switchbacks up to the plateau at 5,350 feet. At 0.7 mile, you will encounter a signed junction, and you will take the left fork (the right fork is the continuation of the Naneum Meadows trail), which is the beginning of the Naneum-Wilson trail.   

The trail heads south and southwest, traversing different meadowed ecosystems, both dry and wet, dotted with a variety of wildflowers and views out to the ridges, many scarred with burns, to the south and east. 

In late spring and early summer, you can see lupine, Tweedy's Lewisia, silver crown, woolen breeches, narrow leaf onion, marsh valerian, Jacob's ladder, hooked-spur violets, larkspur, wild strawberries and false hellebore. The trail mainly sticks to the 5,400-foot contour line with some gentle ups and downs. In this section, the trail widens and appears to have been an old road.

At roughly 2.75 miles from the trailhead, you will cross a creek lined with ample grass, where herds of elk are known to graze. At this creek, the trail makes a sharp turn, and you will head east and then south again through a burned forest and then another wetland.  

At about 3.75 miles, you will arrive at a small pond framed by a pair of loose rocky buttes. Frogs live in the pond, and the shore of the pond or one of the small buttes makes a nice lunch or turnaround spot. The trail continues another quarter of a mile past the pond, but at that point, a tree has fallen across a low bridge and the trail seems to peter out after the bridge. 

If the continuation of the trail can be found, it climbs up to the ridge of Table Mountain at 6,000 feet and descends into a high valley north of Ellensburg, for a total one-way mileage of 8.7 miles.

The Naneum-Wilson trail is open to dirt bikes, horses and bicycles, and their owners have done an excellent job maintaining the trail, by building bridges across the six or seven creeks, which dot the first 4 miles and cutting away the trees that have fallen across the trail. The main downside of the multi-use trail is that the tread (dirt) is a bit loose in places with all the heavier cargo.

Note: Besides the trailhead described here, you can also access the Naneum-Wilson trail from a variety of other trails, such as Drop Creek (#1371.1), Owl Creek (#1371.2) and Wilson Creek (#1387) off FR 35, and make any number of loop hikes, if you are willing to do a short segment of road hiking.