Promising Work Activity on The Whitehorse Trail

There have been encouraging things happening on the Whitehorse Trail, on the ground and in the news.

On June 20th, the last day of Spring, what one might call Summers Eve, I found an ambitious crew working away on the Whitehorse Trail near Fortson Mill Ponds.   Snohomish County has hired several summer work crews as part of a community development plan.

This area of the Whitehorse Trail, popular with fisherman and bird watchers, has been in desperate need of brushing, and now there are people on the ground doing just that:

The trail near Forston Mill Pond is much wider than I realized, now that a crew has been out removing the old growth salmon berry and invasive weeds.

Now you can find the trail.  There is also new gravel on the access road.   The photo above shows the huge improvement compared with what the trail looked like before, which was similar to the photo below.

This is what an untended section of the Whitehorse Trail looks like just west of Swede Heaven Road.

With the new brush removal, the views of the river have improved.

There was only a small contingent of the work crew present when I encountered them, but the enormous effort and accomplishment in the past week is quite evident.  I have heard encouraging rumors of other improvements in the works: bridge decking and proper gates at the road crossings.  I look forward to future trips watching the progress.

Thank you Snohomish County.

This news in the Everett Herald recently:
County awards $6.4 million contract for Oso debris sifting

The article is mostly about the progress of re-opening SR 530, but also of note, it states:

"The contract also calls for clearing portions of the Whitehorse Trail, a former rail corridor roughly parallel to Highway 530."

It is good to hear that the County is committed to this additional luxury along with all the needed restoration work.

The Oso Slide has created many huge needs.  Helping families recover, and re-establishing full road access to Darrington are the current priorities, but the future of the Whitehorse Trail is still a promising work in progress.