After Three Year Closure, the North Cascades Brush Creek Trail Re-opens!
After three years of being closed due to wildfire damage, the Brush Creek Trail in the North Cascades National Park is open! This allows trail users to fully traverse North Cascades National Park — and the entire Pacific Northwest Trail — for the first time in more than three years.
Hikers will now be permitted to pass through the six miles from Whatcom Pass to the Chilliwhack River that were previously closed. The following campsites will currently remain closed: U.S. Cabin Stock, Graybeal, Graybeal Stock, and Whatcom Camps. The trail is not fully stock accessible at this time.
In the three years that the section was closed, PNTA Performance Crews were working hard to clear fallen trees, keep the brush at bay and rebuild the tread that was destroyed in the fire. Crews would spend two-week long hitches all summer in the Brush Creek Drainage with their faces smeared with soot and sweat soaking through their clothes, hauling charred log after log out of the trail corridor. The crews spent countless hours finding rocks to break apart and use as made-in-the-field fill for the damaged sections of tread. Without the trail crews, the brush after the fire would’ve choked out any semblance of trail, the tread would’ve disintegrated and any way forward would be unrecognizable due to fallen trees. Thanks to them, the footpath is becoming reconnected, access is restored, and PNT users can find the way forward.
This long-standing closure prevented thru-hikers from hiking through North Cascades National Park. Although the closure itself was only six trail miles, due to its remote location, most hikers chose to skip many more as they made their crown to coast journeys.. There are no trail alternatives in close proximity, and the hitch-hike to pick up the first section open after the closure meant a 100 mile car ride to circumnavigate Mount Baker. This often led to thru-hikers having to skip upwards of 30 miles of trail if they managed to hitch the entire way, or up to a hundred if they rejoined the PNT near Concrete, WA, which proved to be a much easier ride to get. Others decided to hold off from thru-hiking the PNT at all, knowing their connected footpath was doomed from the start. Now, thru-hikers can connect all of their footsteps from Glacier National Park in Montana to the coast of Washington — on the PNT itself.
Trail users should be aware that work to fully restore the trail is ongoing and hazards remain. A burned landscape presents several new dangers that trail users should take into account as they pass through. In this burn zone, trail users may encounter falling rocks that roll free from unstable switchbacks up trail or falling branches from burned trees. Burned sections of trail are also more prone to flash flooding, so it’s important for hikers to be mindful of weather conditions when passing through the section. To learn more about post fire safety, please visit https://www.nps.gov/noca/planyourvisit/post-fire-safety.htm
PNTA Performance Crews will continue to work in the burn section in coming seasons to restore the trail and reopen campsites. Their hard work is what allows the PNT to continue to stay open and remain a connected footpath from the peaks of the Continental Divide to the crashing waves of the Wilderness Coast. If you want to show your appreciation for their persistent drive and commitment to being stewards of this wild trail, join their efforts in a volunteer outing next season or financially support their future hitches here!