Opened in 2001, Whatcom County’s Canyon Lake Community Forest is celebrated for its old-growth forest — but lack of public vehicle access is stymying nature lovers
It’s been about 15 years since getting to Canyon Lake Community Forest in the Mount Baker foothills was easy for the public. Whatcom County officials had hoped to solve the problem this summer by restoring vehicle access so visitors could drive to and park near the nature reserve’s trailhead.
Instead, vehicle access for the public could take another year, or two.
“I’m counseling patience as we work through this,” said Bennett Knox, director of the Whatcom County Parks and Recreation Department, which manages the community forest.
Because there’s a gate blocking part of the access road at the heart of current negotiations, patience means nature lovers will continue having to hike or bike as much as eight miles round trip on a logging road to experience the 2,266-acre reserve east of Deming.
The park has seven miles of trails, though not all are well-maintained, and views that include Canyon Lake, the Twin Sisters and Mount Baker, a 50-million-year-old palm-frond fossil, and an old-growth forest that includes ancient Alaska yellow cedar trees that have existed for 1,000 years or more.
Whatcom County Executive Satpal Sidhu, who visited the site for the first time in July as part of negotiations over vehicle access for the public, described it as pristine.
“It’s a beautiful place,” Sidhu said, “and I think it’s a treasure.”
You can fill yourself with wonder — if you can get there.
A solution is challenging because sections of the logging road that takes visitors there, and which are the focus of the county’s ongoing efforts, are owned by different public and private entities, complicating negotiations.
Saving ancient trees
Conservation group Whatcom Land Trust sparked interest in 1993 when it identified the area as a conservation site of the highest priority.
James Agee, then a professor of forest ecology at the University of Washington School of Forestry, said the land had “one of the oldest forest stands known in the Pacific Northwest and one of the largest intact stands of its age,” stirring excitement beyond Whatcom County, according to a 1998 writeup by the land trust.
To save those stands of trees, the land trust spearheaded a campaign to buy the property from logging company Crown Pacific, which owned the forest at the time, for nearly $3.7 million. Public and private donors included the Paul G. Allen Forest Protection Foundation and the Whatcom County Conservation Futures Fund.
After its acquisition, the land trust donated the property to Whatcom County and Western Washington University and protected the land in perpetuity with a conservation easement. All three entities serve as stewards.
Canyon Lake Community Forest opened to the public in 2001.
Roadblock
The problem is that public vehicle access has been inconsistent, most recently since 2009 when winter storms caused what was then the access road to Canyon Lake Community Forest to be washed out in several places.
These days, getting to the site requires parking a vehicle well back from the trailhead and behind gates on a graveled logging road named CL-1000. In February and after some effort, when the county reached an agreement with Sierra Pacific Industries (SPI) to allow the public to drive on the road, which the logging company owns and which crosses its property, Whatcom officials said then that they thought public access could be restored this summer.
The county paid a one-time amount of $100,000 to Sierra Pacific, and agreed to put up gates and signage, and to count visitors so it could pay for its share of road maintenance.
But then, the state Department of Natural Resources (DNR) said an agreement was required for access to its roadway, which leads into SPI’s section.
“What we are trying to help facilitate is a discussion about road maintenance. In the end, it is about money,” said Chris Hankey, Baker District manager for DNR’s Northwest Region. “DNR wants to encourage and facilitate public use on DNR lands. We are looking for resources to help us do that.”
Hankey said there’s little money in its operating budget to pay for the recreational impact on its logging roads, which are maintained with money from intermittent timber sales.
Officials aren’t sure how many people will head to Canyon Lake Community Forest once public vehicle access has been restored, but they’re estimating 5,000 visitors a year, with resulting impact to the road, which also is used by five or six residences in the area, and raising concerns about issues that include dumping.
Hankey said what’s under negotiation is roughly 3 1⁄2 miles after the county-owned North Fork Road ends, which DNR calls the Canyon Lake Main Line and the North Fork Main Line.
County officials declined to discuss financial details, but Hankey said DNR wants the county to pay for initial road improvements of $158,000 and annual maintenance costs of nearly $70,000 for those segments.
“It won’t be perfect but will make it a little more safe,” Hankey said, noting the need for pullouts on the one-lane logging road and the kind of gravel that allows regular vehicles to drive over the roadway.
Negotiations come at a time when the county has instituted a hiring freeze because money is tight.
Knox said his department wants to see vehicle access restored so county staff also can get to the park for trail repair and maintenance. The loop around Canyon Lake is passable and in relatively good shape, he said, but the longer trail to the old-growth grove is overgrown and has a couple of small bridges that need to be replaced.
Tapping into nature
Todd Elsworth, founder and executive director of Bellingham-based Recreation Northwest, visited the community forest with a friend in late winter.
The duo parked and rode their mountain bikes to the trailhead.
“It’s a good uphill climb,” Elsworth said, adding that they locked their bikes to a tree and hiked as far as they could. “The nice thing was we were the only people out there.”
And though people can’t drive there, Elsworth said, getting to the trailhead might be easier with e-bikes.
He acknowledged officials’ efforts, noting local and state parks are underfunded and understaffed. “Sometimes it’s difficult to prioritize projects over others because road fixes and bridges are expensive,” Elsworth said.
But he said he also considers the situation through a conservation lens.
“This barrier of vehicle access helps preserve and maintain the integrity of the forest in perpetuity,” Elsworth said. “If we don’t have our sacred public lands then that’s a loss for us all.”
Still, county officials said the mission of county parks is to give people places to visit and to explore.
If people can’t get to the beauty, Sidhu said, “ if they can’t access it, it doesn’t exist.”
— By Kie Relyea