Flooding's toll on national parks and forests: $50M
Fixing all the forest roads and trails that lace Washington's flood-hammered mountains could cost more than $50 million, and the extensive damage will keep people from many favorite destination spots well into the summer, if not longer.
As the rivers recede and people head into the woods to tally the destruction, the toll of this month's flooding is sobering.
Mount Rainier National Park alone suffered about $30 million in damage, a level unseen in the 107 years since its creation. Visitors will be lucky if they can get into the park at all by Christmas. And it will take longer to clear a path to the winter destination spot at Paradise.
"This isn't going to happen overnight," Congressman Norm Dicks, D-Bremerton, said Tuesday after a tour with park officials.
National forests in Washington and Oregon also face extensive repairs, particularly the Gifford Pinchot National Forest, which includes Mount St. Helens, and the Mount Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest, in Seattle's backyard. The North Cascades National Park and Olympic National Park also saw roads washed away.
Hikers can't get to the most heavily used trail on the Mount Baker-Snoqualmie, the route to ice caves near Verlot on the Mountain Loop Highway. Floods damaged a bridge spanning a river there, said Gary Paull, wilderness and trail coordinator for the forest.
Parts of the Pacific Crest Trail, which traverses Washington, were supposed to be repaired in 2007 for flood damage suffered in 2003. Now Paull wonders whether there is more to fix.
"It comes at a bad time because trails funding for national parks and national forests is declining," said Andrew Engelson of the Washington Trails Association, a group representing hikers. "Now the storms have hit us pretty hard and that's going to set the work back even further,"
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Flooding's toll on national parks and forests: $50M
