OLYMPIC NATIONAL FOREST — Slab Camp gravel pit, a popular party spot for youths, has been called “Little Beirut,” with up to 11 burned and shot-up car carcasses abandoned there in the past, sometimes not far from unwanted household appliances and other trash.
These days, it looks more like its original intent: a site where the U.S. Forest Service has historically mined gravel to maintain Forest Service roads in Olympic National Forest south of Lost Mountain and Carlsborg.
It took a cleanup costing about $6,000 to remove rusting junkers and add large rocks as a barrier to keep vehicles on Slab Camp Road out of the pit.
The pit is a favorite spot among off-road vehicle riders and “a real challenge to maintain,” said Dean Yoshina, district ranger for the Olympic National Forest Hood Canal District.
It has also been a traditional hideaway hangout for young Dungeness Valley revelers of high school age on up, Yoshina said.
“One of the recreational activities is to bring up a vehicle and light it on fire and keep flipping it and shooting it,” said Yoshina on Friday.
Tour of projects
Yoshina and other Forest Services officials showed the projects last week during the first tour of the Dungeness Watershed Action Plan team, recruited to come up with more ideas for Forest Service and volunteer-driven projects.
The group met at the Dungeness River Fish Hatchery on Fish Hatchery Road south of Carlsborg before venturing into the Olympic foothills.
Further north in the fragile watershed, Slab Camp trailhead also once was overrun with cars, trucks and all-terrain vehicles that beat trails, roads and parking areas into wildlife habitat, causing extensive stream- and fish-threatening erosion.
It, too, was a party haven and a place to dump household appliances.
Officials said the Clallam County Chain Gang of low-risk jail inmates helps the Forest Service remove dumped appliances from the National Forest.
Commercial thinning, allowed only in the National Forest and not the Olympic National Park wildlife and habitat preservation to the west, helped finance the Slab Camp trailhead improvements at a cost of about $40,000.
The decommissioning of a 2.8-mile stretch of Forest Service Road 2875 leading to the entrance to the trailhead cost about $50,000.
It includes culvert removal, sloping, drainage improvements, seeding, mulching and rock barriers to bar vehicular encroachment in places, said Susan Piper, Forest Service wildlife, botany and invasive plant program manager.
Federal tax dollars and internal Forest Service funding also aid such projects.
Damaged portion of trail
The Forest Service hired a landscape architect to redesign a vehicle-damaged portion off the trail to Slab Camp, said Scott Hagerty, National Forest soils scientist.
The area frames a pleasant view of the Olympic Mountains and a trail lined in places with native flowers and plants.
The work involved graveling a parking area of the Forest Service road, large rock placement to bar vehicles from the restored area, bringing in compost to amend beaten-down and compacted soil, seeding and mulching, and planting native plants. Trail signs that had been shot up or stolen were replaced.
As part of road decommissioning, impassable berms of soil are often constructed to block vehicles altogether or just to allow all-terrain vehicles to traverse them.
While the Friday field trip focused on the Slab Camp and Caraco Creek areas in the Dungeness River watershed south of Lost Mountain, another Forest Service field trip is scheduled Wednesday, Aug. 10, in the Gray Wolf, Upper Dungeness and Tubal Caine sites of the same area further east.
Those wishing to join the tour should email Piper at spiper@fs.fed.us or phone her at 360-956-2435.
RSVP by the end of today.
Anyone can join a group involved in the multiyear project, she said.
The tour is open to the public, but it is also part of a Dungeness River Management Team monthly meeting.
The Forest Service is coordinating the field trip with the Dungeness River Management Team, which was originally activated in the 1980s to explore issues and problems in the Dungeness watershed from a community-wide perspective.
Representatives of environmental groups including The Wilderness Society, regional tribes and city and county leaders are among those engaged in the action planning process that is scheduled to create a draft plan by the end of September.
Variety of interests
Those touring late last Friday ranged from Rebecca Wolf, a volunteer with the Sierra Club Cascade Chapter in Washington, to Ross Krumpe, a Blue Mountain Road-area resident who represents off-road vehicle interests on the North Olympic Peninsula.
“We are just trying to get a place for recreation to ride our ORVs,” Krumpe said, explaining why he was attending the field trip.
“Every group has its rights to its own recreation.”
The Dungeness River watershed of Olympic National Forest is the second most-used area for off-road vehicles, he said, next to the Calawah area near Forks.
Also attending the tour was Judith Miller of Port Angeles — representing Democratic U.S. Rep. Norm Dicks of the 6th Congressional District, which includes the North Olympic Peninsula — Scott Chitwood, Jamestown S’Klallam tribe natural resources director; and Jeff Chapman, a Port Townsend-area resident representing Washington Trails Association and the Back Country Horsemen of Washington-Peninsula Chapter.
Peninsula naturalist and author Tim McNulty of Sequim lauded Forest Service representatives for the Slap Camp pit cleanup effort but voiced concerns about lead ammunition peppering trees in the forest.
The field trip was part of a collaborative Forest Service approach to planning forestland management.
“We will focus on projects now and costs later,” Yoshina said, adding that the Forest Service will take public comments until the end of August.
Comments on potential project recommendations will be accepted until Aug. 31 through Piper’s email, spiper@fs.fed.us, or by mailing Susan Piper, Olympic National Forest, 1835 S.W. Black Lake Blvd., Olympia, WA 98512
Forest Service officials said they are looking to those who know and use local forestland to help advise them on future restoration efforts.
“This is your backyard. This is an area you know,” Piper said.
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Sequim-Dungeness Valley Editor Jeff Chew can be reached at 360-681-2391 or at jeff.chew@peninsuladailynews.com.
