It will take a few years, but Olympic Discovery Trail travelers are a little bit closer to getting from the Port Angeles waterfront to the Elwha River.
The city extended the Waterfront Trail – as the Olympic Discovery Trail is known inside the city limit – on a temporary route about one mile past the site of the old Rayonier pulp mill in 2002.
It linked Waterfront Trail users in Port Angeles with Discovery Trail aficionados in Sequim and beyond.
Now officials with Port Angeles city and Clallam County are working to extend the trail west from Marine Drive through the city and out to the Elwha.
The extension, which won’t be completed until next year, will tie into other planned Discovery Trail sections and allow travel all the way to Cooper Ranch Road.
The city’s deputy recreation director, Bill Sterling, said the westward route will travel up Hill Street, then along the former Milwaukee Road railway grade.
Then it will cross Dry Creek and extend to the city boundary at Lower Elwha Road, where the county will assume jurisdiction, he said.
Clallam County road planner Rich James said the county will build the trail on public right of way from Lower Elwha Road about two miles to the Elwha River.
But first the trail route will serve as a construction access road for reconstruction of the county’s Elwha River bridge, he said.
The new bridge, which will replace an aging wooden bridge, will be 585 feet long and 28 feet wide with two lanes and 4-foot shoulders.
It will include a hanging pedestrian deck underneath that will take the Olympic Discovery Trail over the river.
James said bridge construction is slated for 2008, and the trail section will open sometime that year after construction is done.
Then the trail will extend up to state Highway 112, where the “adventure route” is slated to begin.
Hikers, mountain bikers or equestrians will able to continue west on the three-foot-wide route from Highway 112 to Lake Crescent, when that section of the trail is completed this summer.
The trail will then tie into the Spruce Railroad Trail along Lake Crescent for four miles.
It will then pick up the county’s 16-mile trail extension from the west end of the Spruce Railroad grade to Cooper Ranch Road.
