Volunteers smoothing the multi-use trail during a May work party on Chimacum Ridge.
Jefferson Land Trust purchased 853-acre Chimacum Ridge Forest in 2024. Once it’s combined with adjacent Valley View Forest, Chimacum Ridge Community Forest will total 918 acres of working forest, wetlands, and wildlife habitat. The community forest will be a shared living resource, bringing economic, ecological, and social benefits to our community — forever. Save the date for the public opening of Chimacum Ridge Community Forest on Saturday, September 27! More details to come.
A volunteer walking a portion of the completed .2 miles of the multi-use trail.
Over the past year, a multitude of volunteers and contract crews have been working hard alongside Land Trust staff members and Community Forest Manager Ryen Helzer to get the forest ready to open. Our focus is on creating necessary visitor infrastructure and building trails so that visitors — including hikers, bikers, wheelchair users, horseback riders, and local students — can access, explore, and enjoy this special place.
This work is guided by the community forest’s Access, Recreation, and Education (ARE) plan which was developed with the help of the community over the last few years. We encourage you to take a look at the reader-friendly ARE plan to learn more about the process used to develop it, learn about our exciting plans for the forest, and see some neat photos and illustrations, too!
As we share exciting updates about the trail work in progress up to Chimacum Ridge, several trails at Valley View Forest, including wheelchair-accessible trails, are already open for visitors — and we encourage you to visit! You can get the details on all these trails on our website. Valley View is open from dawn to dusk, seven days a week, at 1717 Center Road, Chimacum. (Infrequent closings for selective harvests or maintenance are posted on our website and social media).
In recent months, our main priority for trail building has been the multi-use trail. “Multi-use” refers to the multiple recreational uses such as walking, hiking, bicycling, and horseback riding. When completed, this six-foot-wide graveled path, beginning at the Valley View parking lot and heading south, will lead to the top of Chimacum Ridge. There you’ll find the Loop Road (a former logging road suitable for hiking) and small trails weaving among young trees and opening up to sweeping views of Beaver and Center valleys and the Cascade and Olympic mountains.
“We worked really hard to find a path up the slope of the ridge that’s suitable for most walking pedestrians,” explains Ryen Helzer, Community Forest Manager. “Some sections have a steeper grade than a ‘walk in the park,’ but we’re creating a number of resting areas and beautiful bench spots to enjoy while making your way to the top of the ridge.”
A Washington Conservation Corps (WCC) crew helping complete the first .2 miles of the multi-use trail.
The first .2 miles of the multi-use trail is smooth and flat enough for motorized wheelchairs or assisted wheelchairs to have access to a viewpoint of Center Valley. You can traverse this section now — just stop when you come to the gate with the “No Trespassing” sign!
We’ve now roughed in (cleared vegetation down to mineral soil) the entire multi-use trail with the invaluable help of Washington Conservation Corps (WCC) crews and local volunteers over hundreds of hours. With the assistance of volunteers, we’re working to prep the trail’s surface for more than 200 tons of gravel to be laid and tamped down over the summer. This will ensure a relatively smooth surface for hikers, bikers, and horseback riders.
The WCC crew was contracted for two weeks in early April and laid more than 60 tons of gravel on the .2-mile portion of the multi-use trail segment that’s now open at Valley View. They also moved and set 21 huge retaining logs (salvaged from the forest during our pilot selective harvest in 2021) and installed 13 culverts to divert rainwater away from the trail.
“I have so much praise and respect for the WCC crew,” says Ryen. “We truly would not be this close to completing the multi-use trail without their amazing work. This clears a lot of time for myself and our volunteers to focus on the many other projects needed to safely open the community forest in September.”
We’re now designing benches we’ll build using timber harvested sustainably from the forest that will be placed along the multi-use trail later this summer.
Community Forest Manager Ryen Helzer standing at a resting area on the multi-use trail where a bench will be installed.
We’ve also roughed in a trail that heads upslope from the community pavilion at Valley View to the top of the ridge’s Loop Road. We’ll be relying on community volunteers to help complete this trail after the community forest opens in September.
A small .3 miles of trail that connects to several beautiful viewpoints on top of the ridge was roughed in by WCC crews last year, and we’re hoping we can secure the funding to convert these trail segments into more wheelchair accessible trails and viewpoints in the near future. We have the support from our friends at DASH (Disability Access Starts Here!) and the Jefferson Transit Authority to connect this trail to a drop-off point for Dial-A-Ride participants to bring wheelchair users up to Chimacum Ridge in the future.
Our friends at DASH continue to be excellent partners in our trail work, helping us test and plan all of our accessible trails at the community forest.
All the exciting progress on Chimacum Ridge is possible thanks to the hard work of community volunteers, including those who come out to work on trails and those who serve on the Chimacum Ridge Community Forest Board of Managers and three advisory groups (Economic, Ecological, and Social).
View from the top of Chimacum Ridge.
“I’m so grateful for the Board of Managers leading this effort and for the advisory group members volunteering their time to guide the Board on how to sustainably manage this Community Forest both today and for future generations,” says Ryen.
He continues, “This is a grand attempt at creating a forest for all. We’re hopeful that visitors to the community forest will see a forest that’s managed using principles of reciprocity, and will leave with a clear understanding that if we take care of the land, the land will take care of us.”
We encourage you to head out to Valley View Forest to begin exploring this special place for yourself — and don’t forget to save the date for the public opening of Chimacum Ridge Community Forest on Saturday, September 27!
Are you interested in supporting the development of the community forest at this exciting and critical stage? Your gift will support the construction and materials needed for trails, kiosks, benches, and other necessary infrastructure needed to welcome visitors to safely and comfortably explore Chimacum Ridge. To make your gift today, click here (in the “What inspired you to make a gift today?” field, please note Chimacum Ridge Community Forest).
