PORT ANGELES — Clallam County commissioners today will consider a temporary permit from the U.S. Forest Service to build a short segment of the Olympic Discovery Trail west of Lake Crescent.
The quarter-mile segment is located near the Sol Duc River south of U.S. Highway 101. It will connect the multi-use trail to a recently acquired Forest Service Road and Cooper Ranch Road.
“They wanted to allow us to be able to work on this, so this is just a temporary easement over a private road that the Forest Service has rights to,” County Engineer Ross Tyler told commissioners Monday.
“So they granted us the right to use it, to start working on it.”
The Olympic Discovery Trail will eventually connect Admiralty Inlet to the Pacific Ocean from Port Townsend to LaPush.
Much of the trail follows an old railroad grade.
“This is just another chunk in whole series of chunks,” Tyler said.
Clallam County is working with the U.S. Forest Service, state Department of Natural Resources and timber companies such as Merrill & Ring to build the trail from the top of Fairholme Hill to Sappho via Cooper Ranch and Mary Clark roads.
“It could be that by next summer it will be paved — that section through the Sol Duc,” Commissioner Mike Doherty told members of the Port Angeles Regional Chamber of Commerce last week.
Chamber Executive Director Russ Veenema presented Doherty with a $2,085 check Aug. 13 — taken from a $5 surcharge from the $35 registrations to the Ride the Hurricane bicycle event — for the development and expansion of the Olympic Discovery Trail.
Doherty said the money could be leveraged for matching funds for specific parts of the project.
“I’m just grateful to Russ Veenema, who convinced his board that they would use this surcharge hopefully, as he stated, into the future,” Doherty said in the Aug. 14 commissioners’ meeting.
“It could grow each year they put on this event, so it’s well appreciated.”
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Reporter Rob Ollikainen can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5072, or at rollikainen@peninsuladailynews.com.
