Olympian decision and future of route discussed

Representatives from the Superior Forest Service were at the Friday meeting of the Mineral County Commissioners to discuss the decision made for the Route of the Olympian trail.

Superior District Ranger Tawnya Brummett and Biologist Beth Kennedy gave a brief description of the history of the route as well as what the forest service plans to accomplish with the trail to the county commissioners and attendees from the public.

“Over the last decade the forest service, fish wildlife and parks and land trust have purchased a lot of the private parcels to get connection (with the trail),” Kennedy said. “Now that we have some of it connected, and it’s not all connected yet, we can take the first step.”

Kennedy said “a lot of things don’t change” with the route and the winter use will not change with the decision for use by the forest service.

“Spring and fall, whatever is usable for full-sized motorized (vehicles) is open to full size motorized,” Kennedy said. “The decision is basically what the collaborative group came up with.”

According to Kennedy, the collaboration on how the route would be used began with a group of “primarily locals” working four years ago to create a plan.

Kennedy then utilized a large paper board to draw a rough sketch of the route in order to showcase how it would be used in the summer.

“What we are doing is during the summer season, which corresponds with the Hiawatha, is having a piece be bikes only,” Kennedy said. “As a reaction to a lot of comments, this piece of the Northern Pacific will go to ATV use during the summer. We got a lot of comments on that and so the final decision was to leave this road, which gives people access to the river.”

The road will be available to full sized vehicles throughout the summer and Kennedy said the piece of trail is “roughly” from Saltese to Haugan.

“From Haugan to down passed De Borgia, basically where you can see the Henderson exit, that’s just a road,” Kennedy said. “There’s a lot of private land in there and we aren’t going to fight that – year long that is just a road.”

Kennedy continued to elaborate on the details of the route and how it would be utilized in the different seasons as well as how the forest service went about securing portions of the route for use.

The forest service also plans to set up a series of crossings along the river from the Northern Pacific trail across the river to the other side including in one area that could help the forest service secure a portion of the trail that is currently on private property, whose owner is currently “unwilling to sell.”

“He has tried for a lot of years to keep people off of his property and it doesn’t work and he is tired of the garbage,” Kennedy said. “He said ‘don’t even come and talk to me until you get a bypass or something’ so this will give us that and we will see if we can keep people off the creek and that may give us an opening to negotiate with him.”

Kennedy said the forest service is also seeking grant funding in order to complete a variety of projects on the route. One grant was applied for recently but Superior “did not make the cut” and Kennedy said a lack of letters of support was the cause.

“What I am learning is that one letter from a club is one letter, but one letter from 20 individuals in the club is 20 letters,” Kennedy said. “So that is a learning thing on my part.”

Brummett commended Kennedy’s efforts with obtaining grant funds in the past and said that with the particular grant it was more the process changing that caused Superior to be passed.

Kennedy also stated that budget wise “we ain’t doing this tomorrow” as far as all of the projects on the trail go but if they begin to get additional funding they will start the improvements as soon as possible.