Today’s hike was revisiting a hike I had last done in the fall of 2020 in the Trillium Community Forest on Whidbey Island.
We walked from our house to the Bounty Loop Trailhead and started on Bounty Trail, which the first section is paved and ADA accessible. At the junction for Level Loop, stay straight and onto single-track trail.
Bounty Trail comes to a junction, take a left onto Crossroads, an old logging road. It is wide and easy to hike, and while it gains elevation, it isn’t hard.
Crossroads has plenty of Alders in their end-of-life stage, with undergrowth. It is well-lit.
The Red Huckleberries are just starting to get ripe. It rained nearly all day yesterday, so the forest was cool and damp.
Thimbleberry flowers.
As you head up the ridge, the undergrowth has a strong game, with plenty of Salal.
Passing Raven trail, an uprooted tree from a past storm.
As we neared the end of Crossroads in this section, a tree was across the trail. I straddled to cross it, and Alsitaire jumped over it. To be young…
At the junction of Crossroads and Patrick’s Way. The previous thinning is very obivious here, as Patrick’s Way, which long ago was a major logging road, has become one once again.
We turned right onto Patrick’s Way and headed uphill, passing quite a bit of major thinning. It is recovering, but it will be years till it isn’t noticeable.
Ripe Salmonberry.
This was never a trail, but now it is definitely not one. Not for you, you filthy peasant!
The trail comes to a junction. To the left, Patrick keeps going, and Dragonfly Glade starts to the right. The park bench is a memorial for who the trail is named after.
Now…that thinning. I pulled up photos from 2020, and where a closed-off logging road is, straight in the middle, used to be a giant evergreen tree; sad to see that gone.
Looking closer, this thinning was raw and ugly. They took the trees of value and left dying and dead Evergreens (I can count 6 quickly that are dead), Alder in its last years of life, and a lot of skinny pole trees. It’s discouraging, to say the least. We had to thin the forests on our land for fire safety and to build a more resilient forest. We took the dead ones and the dying always. I get it, it will get better eventually, but I don’t have to appreciate or like what they chose to do. The “trail” is now a full-sized logging road, and they put in large rocks so the trucks and machinery could move back and forth. This road is far different than the rapidly disappearing road that was present in 2020. I would not call this a bonus by any means. It is so wide now, the new Google sat photos you can see the road visible on it.
Heading uphill and then downhill, we finished Patrick’s Way, came to the gate, and walked Pacific Dogwood, which is the private road for the homes back there. Yes, it is a two-lane paved road, but it is so quiet, and the hike goes quickly. The only cars are those of people living there. Pacific Dogwood ends at the Trillium parking lot just off of Hwy 525, one of the three trailheads with parking.
Not far from the trailhead lot is the other end of Dragonfly Glade, take a right onto it and dip into the forest.
The last time I was back here, this was still private property, with an easement. Now this land has come into the land trust with a deal done.
It’s a very lush section of the Trillium, on the other side of the ridge.
With our wet spring – it rained a lot even yesterday – the low-lying water areas were full. And Skunk Cabbage was just poking up.
Oh this trail, here you want it never to stop. You feel like little fairies are watching you. It’s smooth tread all the way.
We were clipping along, really loving it.
But I knew it was about to end.
For that land that had been acquired? It went under a severe thinning session just this past month or so. They cut in a logging road, off of Mutiny Bay, and the trees kept rolling out. Dragonfly Glade trail was a mess as soon as we hit the edge of it.
At the junction for Dragonfly and to the left, Crossroads. It was so dismal looking. Just raw, stripped. Any big trees were gone. But so many dead trees were left behind, the ground was littered with debris, mostly roots broken off of the rootballs. Again, I know and accept it is part of the management of the forest, but why were all the dead trees left standing? Why did they keep the trees so thickly stacked?
We turned left onto Crossroads and walked down what was now a messed up logging road. One side was a sticky mud pit, with rocks and debris everywhere. It slowed us down, having to walk carefully.
Maybe in 5 to 10 years, it will look good again. Hopefully.
Then we came to this mess. It was a temporary logging road through a wide swatch of cut trees. It’s not marked, and there is an odd trail cut through it, over the temporary logging road. Ignore it and head to the left. If you look hard enough, you will see the old trail in the woods, all green and pleasant.
Finally, through the mess, we were back on the real trail, in the green woods.
We did eventually pass where that other “new trail” cut back in and skirted the clear cut.
Finally, we stayed in the woods, leaving it all behind. Eventually, we came back to where we started on Crossroads and headed down Bounty Trail, back to the trailhead.
We put in about 5 miles, including walking to and from our house.
~Sarah