Lake Sylvia and the City of Montesano Forest Park trails are amazing! I had never heard of this park until I saw a run club that I follow had a race there, and so I decided to go check out the trails. The park is in a really cute town that has a lot of restaurants and coffee shops that I wish I had time to visit.
As Lake Sylvia is a state park, be sure to bring your Discover pass. The park was clean and quiet when I visited. It looks like in the summer you could swim in the lake and even camp. The bathrooms at the park were nice and even had showers!
I started my hike by heading up the Brownie Trail - note that the Forestry trails & Nevis Trails are closed (see photo). Almost every trail intersection had a trail marking and even a map, which was so nice! The trails were in great shape and I opted to continue my hike along the Sylvia Ridge trail to the City of Montesano Forest. There were so many trails there that I wish I had time to explore, but I opted to do a large loop using the East and West Fork trails. The loop ended up being 13.77 miles with 2,224 feet of elevation gain. The trails in the city forest were a bit muddy but not terrible.
On the way home, I stopped by Snowbird Farm and Cidery which I highly recommend! Great ciders and lovely folks running the place!
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