Wild Sky Wilderness Trails Plan Released

There is good news and bad news with the brand new Wild Sky Wilderness Area Trail Plan. The good news is that the plan has identified some amazing trail projects, analyzing and evaluating 50 existing and proposed trails in the Wilderness Area. The bad news is that the Skykomish District has few resources to develop these trails, which means this is much more than a vision than an executable plan.

The 106,000 acre Wild Sky Wilderness Area is Washington's newest wilderness. It was passed in 2008, after years of work and is the the first such designation in Washington State since 1984. The legislation required the Forest Service to conduct a trail plan for the area, since the newly-minted wilderness had only a few routes, and those are mostly on its periphery. The Mount Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest kicked off its Wild Sky Wilderness trail planning process in the summer of 2011, and the recently released final plan is the result of extensive public involvement, field reconnaissance and evaluation. You'll want to click through to view the map of proposed trails.

The final plan is the product of both vision and practical awareness of just how broke the Forest Service really is. There are a lot of great potential trails in Wild Sky. Many of them are in appropriate potential locations. Some are not. But the world of trails that could be built is limited by the very severe budget shortfalls that the agency is facing. They're even worse than projected when they started planning in 2011 due to the impacts of sequestration and the long term inability of Congress to agree on a budget plan.

But we're cautiously optimistic that some of these trails -- particularly Iron Mountain-Conglomerate Point, Mineral Butte and Blanca Lake -- will be planned and built sooner, by using the unique combination of talent and grit that WTA and the Forest Service bring to these projects. We'll keep you posted as this plan marches forward!