Rockport State Park — Sunday, Mar. 27, 2011

North Cascades > North Cascades Highway - Hwy 20

Because of a windstorm on 11-15-10 most of the trails in the park are impassable. We talked to Al, the resident ranger who was working on clearing the many blowdowns on the south side of the park across HWY 20. He told us that a section of the Evergreen Trail has hundreds of match stick blowdowns and a huge Douglas Fir has fallen on a section of the trail. This will require a complete rerouting. We hiked the 0.4 mile Sauk Springs Trail and the 0.5 mile Skagit View Trail which are on the south side of HWY 20. These have been cleared but evidence of the storm are obvious everywhere you look. Al told us that he had lost all his aides because of budget cuts and that he was the only one working on the clearing. We walked through the campground and then did a section of the West Loop Interpretive trail which is open to hikers but is no longer suitable for ADA because of damage from the storm. A single picture can not show the extensive damage from this storm. Ferned understory is covered by fallen trees and debris in many areas of the West Loop.