DEER RIDGE TRAIL, OLYMPIC NATIONAL FOREST — Little in the Olympic Mountains comes easy.
Ask the members of the 1889-90 Press Expedition, who took six months to traverse the range from north to south. Or Tim McNulty, a writer and conservationist who has lived on the Olympic Peninsula for 50 years, notching many miles underfoot in that time. He knows how hiking through these mountains can be as much of a slog as navigating the world of public lands politics.
For 15 years, McNulty and fellow conservationists have fought to get a patchwork of more than 125,000 acres of land in the Olympic National Forest designated federal wilderness areas, and nearly 500 miles of rivers deemed Wild and Scenic Rivers — permanently excluding these lands from potential logging and road building, prohibiting mechanized vehicles and tools there, and safeguarding the rivers from future hydroelectric projects.
“There’s very little smooth, flat hiking in the Olympics — everything is either up or down,” said McNulty, vice president of the nonprofit Olympic Park Advocates. “And this effort has been a particularly long, steep climb.”
Buffeted by political headwinds facing wilderness expansion and undeterred by false starts over the years, campaigners believe the finish line for the conservation proposal known as Wild Olympics has never been closer.