OLYMPIC NATIONAL PARK — Despite a beefed-up staff to keep Hurricane Ridge Road open seven days a week throughout the winter months, high wind or avalanches are likely to close the only access to the park’s most visited attraction at times, said a park spokeswoman.
“High winds cause huge drifts at the top,” Barb Maynes, Olympic National Park spokeswoman, told about 40 people at a Sequim-Dungeness Valley Chamber of Commerce luncheon at SunLand Golf & Country Club earlier this week.
Avalanches can close Hurricane Ridge Road — a 17-mile drive heading south from Port Angeles — at lower elevations, carrying rocks, trees and debris across the road along with the snow, she said.
During the past five years, Maynes said on Tuesday, the park staff has been able to keep the road open 80 percent of the days scheduled during the winter.
In the past, Hurricane Ridge Road was plowed to keep it open three days each week, Friday through Sunday.
This winter, it will be open seven days a week, with plowing expected to begin in mid-November.
Maynes said an infusion of money — $250,000 through a federal Department of the Interior grant and more than $75,000 in local donations, including money from the cities of Port Angeles and Sequim — means that the park can hire two additional emergency response and law enforcement rangers, a new interpreter at Hurricane Ridge Visitor Center and up to four road-maintenance positions.
She emphasized that planning for the winter months was well under way but still is being penciled out.
The funding came as a result of a push — championed by Port Angeles City Council member Cherie Kidd and others — to keep the road open seven days a week throughout the winter months.
The Department of the Interior wants to determine if keeping the road open leads to greater revenue in winter months for area hotels and other businesses.
After a trial period, it would determine if the increased access had enough of an impact on visits to the park to justify the federal government fully funding the effort each year.
If the North Olympic Peninsula can market the Peninsula’s main winter recreation attractions, and show that increased accessibility to Hurricane Ridge leads to higher visitor counts, then officials will want to keep the road open year-round next year, Kidd said in early August.
Kidd said Seattle sources have told her that many from that side of Puget Sound want to visit the park year-round.
Vickie Maples, Sequim-Dungeness Valley Chamber of Commerce director, said Tuesday that the chamber has launched a tourism committee “to maximize opportunities” created by the greater access to Hurricane Ridge.
“We want to be able to package a stay in Sequim,” Maples said, adding that the package would include an overnight state in Sequim, spas, shopping downtown and visiting Dungeness Lighthouse.
Kidd said hotels have pledged to market ski packages if Hurricane Ridge Road is open year-round.
Maynes said Aramark, the park’s concessionaire, is still considering how it will operate during the winter months at Hurricane Ridge, but that it has said it will definitely operate on the weekends during the winter.
Aramark runs the food concession and gifts shop at Hurricane Ridge.
Amanda Lovelady, resident district manager for Aramark in Port Angeles, was not available for comment for this story.
Maynes said the daily interpretive staff will work at the Hurricane Ridge Visitor Center from December to March, but details about staffing has not been worked out.
“They will be at the visitor center, but they will be outside mostly,” Maynes said.
The same local match raised this year would have to be raised next year and again in 2012 — if the federal trial last that long.
U.S. Rep. Norm Dicks, whose 6th Congressional District includes the Peninsula, has said he is trying to secure funding to cover those years.
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Sequim-Dungeness Valley Editor Jeff Chew can be reached at 360-681-2391 or at jeff.chew@peninsuladailynews.com.