Blazing the William O. Douglas Heritage Trail

Kyle Sonnabend-Liberty walks down toward Jumpoff Meadows, with Rimrock Lake in the background. Not far from this spot, Sonnabend-Liberty and Susan Paolella had been able to see all the way back east to Yakima, making it a high point — literally and figuratively — of their hike along the future William O. Douglas Heritage Trail route. (Photo courtesy of Susan Paolella)

YAKIMA, Wash. — It’s not officially done, but the William O. Douglas Heritage Trail has been done.

The 85-mile route between Davis High in Yakima and Ohanapecosh has, of course, been traveled by its namesake, whose love and advocacy for the great outdoors inspired those who have spent the last six years making the trail a reality.

Even before the trail’s route is finalized and all its right-of-way issues ironed out, others have already navigated its length — linking existing trails and roadways — both in one long, uninterrupted stretch and in starts and stops.

And they know others are eager to follow.

“Oh yeah,” said Faye Bradford, a Backcountry Horsemen of Washington representative who rode most of the route — minus the not-horse-friendly city part — with a friend over four days in August. “They’re lining up.”

What those future trail travelers experience, say two Yakima women who hiked the trail’s length in five day-long segments spread out over four months last summer, may be cathartic.

Paolella and Sonnabend-Liberty head west along the crest of Cowiche Mountain just west of Yakima, on what will be part of the William O. Douglas Heritage Trail. (Photo courtesy of Susan Paolella)

That was the feeling Yakima hikers Susan Paolella and Kyle Sonnabend-Liberty felt when they crested the ridge at Jumpoff Lookout, southeast of Rimrock Lake, and looked at both where they had come from and where they were going.

“You could see Jumpoff Meadows below. I think you could see the Goat Rocks, too,” Sonnabend-Liberty said. “The most incredible feeling was ‘Here we are.’ We could look back and see Yakima, and to go from the shrub steppe and then be in the mountains, you realize you’ve walked from Yakima to the mountains.”

The stretch of hiking from the expansive openness of Snow Mountain Ranch to Jumpoff, Paolella said, “was absolutely gorgeous. You have this view that opens the whole valley up. You go from shrub steppe — dry, beautiful in its own way … then you walk and get into patches of pine trees and lupine … and then you get to Jumpoff, and you get Rimrock and Mount Rainier and Goose Egg Mountain and Kloochman Rock.

“It’s so scenic.”

Paolella’s husband Ray, a former Yakima city attorney and one of the driving forces behind the trail’s inception, had hiked the trail in 2005. He had been part of a group of about 150 people who gathered in downtown Yakima to begin what was to be the inaugural hike of the Douglas Trail, but four days later the only ones left from that original throng to reach the boundary of Mount Rainier National Park were Ray Paolella and another avid Yakima hiker, Jeff Hagen.

It is, after all, a long way.

Which is why its staunchest advocates are hoping its long-term attraction will be as a bunch of shorter routes, not one long one, following its unveiling on June 9, 2012. (The group had hoped to have the official opening take place on June 2, 2012’s National Trails Day, but didn’t want the timing to conflict with the Gap2Gap, set for June 2.)

“What we will actually be releasing and promoting and opening in June of next year is a series of the most usable day-hike sections of the trail,” said Ted Gamlem, who heads up the task force establishing the route. “For most people it will represent places they can now go to and walk or ride the trail, because not a lot of people will do the whole 80 miles.

“The long sections, like Cowiche Mill Road to Rimrock, and the one that goes up Sand Ridge and over Cowlitz Pass, we’re going to be looking at those as probably backpacking sections, maybe three-day kind of usages,” Gamlem said. “But even with everything we can describe as a day hike, we’re looking at some scenic loop hikes that run off the regular trail alignment.”

Even that alignment is not finalized.

While the route is established from Davis High through the Cowiche Canyon Conservancy’s Snow Mountain Ranch property, the next section to the west is still a question mark. The current temporary route follows Cowiche Mill Road, but the task force would like to incorporate Hatton Road because of its pioneering history as a transportation route.

But Hatton crosses through two privately-owned parcels.

“Because of that, where we establish the trail has to be specifically approved by the landowners,” Gamlem said. “That hasn’t been done at this point.”

Where Cowiche Mill Road reaches Reynolds Creek, the route follows a Green Dot road that trail travelers can follow through Louie Way Gap to Jumpoff Lookout — one of the William O. Douglas Trail’s high points, both figuratively and literally.

“When we got up towards Louie Way Gap, you could look back and see the town of Yakima,” recalls Bradford of her August ride of the route with another Backcountry Horseman member, Pam Bailey of Yakima. “It was really beautiful.

“I was really surprised because I thought there would be more wooded area. I thought I wouldn’t be able to see all the scenic views.”

Those scenic views also included deep snowfields in the William O. Douglas Wilderness — so deep, in fact, that they ended up doing the last section of the route coming back up out of Ohanapecosh on the Laughing Water Creek Trail, instead coming out that way. And, of course, wildlife.

“We saw five bull elk with these huge antlers,” Bailey said. “We were enjoying watching them when we finally realized — Oh! Pictures! — but by the time we managed to get the camera out it was too late.”

For Susan Paolella and Kyle Sonnabend-Liberty, the trip had other poignant factors. Paolella has ancestors who hiked from Yakima to Mount Rainier in 1881, following largely the same route she did last year. And both she and Sonnabend-Liberty read and were inspired by two Douglas-penned books — his early-years autobiography, “Go East, Young Man,” and “Of Men and Mountains,” which details many of his hikes in the Cascades.

After her horseback journey over the length of the trail, Faye Bradford came away a bit pleasantly surprised at one particular aspect.

“With all the fences up nowadays, that a person could actually go from (Yakima) to Mount Rainier National Park,” she said, “was easier than I thought it would be.”

More information

These hikers and horseback riders in this story, as well as other volunteers working on behalf of the William O. Douglas Heritage Trail, have used Global Positioning System (GPS) devices to assist the trail’s task force in mapping the trail and having accurate mileage counts along the route.

Task force members will be meeting on Jan. 4 with Forest Service officials to work on finalizing all route details from Louie Way Gap to Mount Rainier National Park.

For updates on the William O. Douglas Heritage Trail prior to the official June opening, including right-of-way progress reports and specifics on the different sections of the trail, go to williamodouglas.wordpress.com/.