Every two years, a few hundred people who care deeply about Washington's trails gather in one place to compare notes.
This October 7 through 9, that place was the Wenatchee Convention Center, and the theme of the 2026 Washington State Trails Conference was two words that represent something I feel strongly about: Stronger Together. I think it's exactly the right idea, and I think it's a message every TWBC member should take to heart. I was only able to attend a fraction of the breakout sessions, but I wanted to share my experience.
A Room Full of
Different Trail Users
What struck me first was who was in the room. The Washington
State Trails Coalition, which hosts the conference, describes it as a gathering
for every kind of trail user: hikers and cyclists, equestrians, skiers and
snowshoers, snowmobile and OHV riders, and even paddlers on water trails. The exhibitor
list ran from WSDOT and the Recreation and Conservation Office to the
Backcountry Horsemen of Washington, the Washington Water Trails Association,
and the Snoqualmie Tribe Ancestral Lands Movement. Out on the trail, those
groups don't always see eye to eye. In Wenatchee, they were all working on the
same problem.
Everyone Agrees
Trails Matter. Paying for Them Is Harder.
Many of the presentations I sat in on focused on the impact
of trails: on health, on local economies, and on the communities they connect.
One of the conference's main tracks was built entirely around funding trails to
fuel the recreation economy, looking at how agencies and nonprofits are tapping
new funding sources and creative partnerships. That framing tells you
something. The case for trails is strong, but it still has to be made, again
and again, to the people holding the purse strings.
And the money really is tight. Back in January, the Washington
Wildlife and Recreation Coalition warned that the Governor's proposed
supplemental budget would cut recreation lands maintenance funding, including
$500,000 at State Parks, after several years of investment aimed at
long-standing maintenance backlogs. Building new trail gets the ribbon cuttings.
Keeping existing trail open is the quieter, less glamorous job, and it's often
the first thing squeezed.
To be fair, there's a reasonable argument that when budgets
are strained, trails shouldn't jump the line ahead of schools, health care, or
public safety. I don't dismiss that. But a trail that isn't maintained doesn't
just sit there waiting for better times. It deteriorates, and fixing it later
costs far more than caring for it now. That's why the answer can't simply be to
ask government for more. It has to be all of us, pulling in the same direction.
Creativity Tells the
Story
One thing that surprised me was how many presenters made the
case for trails not with spreadsheets but with stories. A session called
Belonging Outdoors highlighted a partnership of North Central Washington
organizations: TREAD, NCW Equity Alliance, Visit Chelan County, Evergreen
Mountain Bike Alliance, Chelan-Douglas Land Trust, Wenatchee Valley YMCA,
Thriving Together NCW, and the Wenatchee Valley Museum. In 2023 they hosted a
three-part film series, with each screening paired with a conversation about its
themes. The first session showed Expedition
Reclamation, followed by a panel on the lived experiences of women of color
in the outdoors. The second paired Ascend
and Elevated, two films about the
outdoor experiences of people with disabilities and the barriers they face. The
third screened This Land and Here We Stand, then closed with a
facilitator-led workshop to brainstorm local, systemic solutions.
This year the group began building an action plan, kicked
off with a screening of Best Day Ever,
which follows mountain bikers overcoming challenges in Vermont's Green
Mountains. The presenters described how the films helped their community
connect more fully with the need for adaptive trails. It was a great
illustration of how far a little creativity can go in telling the story of
trails.
Storytelling showed up closer to home, too. Breanna Fokes of
the Foothills Rails-to-Trails Coalition and Jinger Hendricks, Visual
Communications Lead at Parametrix, walked through the signs designed for the
Doc Tait Pavilion along the Foothills Trail. Doug "Doc"
Tait was Buckley's town doctor for 34 years and is remembered as the father
of the Foothills Trail. He and his wife Donna poured time and money into
promoting a rail trail linking the foothills communities, and the Foothills
Rails-to-Trails Coalition grew out of that effort. Watching how much thought
goes into telling a story like his in a few panels of words and images, I left
with a real appreciation for the value of professional sign design. A good sign
doesn't just inform a rider. It connects them to people and who made the trail possible,
and the efforts needed to see a trail dream come true.
Thinking Big: The
Mansfield Branch Line Trail
If storytelling is one way to build support for trails,
ambition is another. A presentation on the Mansfield Branch Line Trail showed
what's possible when people passionate about trails take on a truly massive
project. The Great Northern's Mansfield Branch Line once ran 60.58 miles from the Columbia River,
winding up Moses Coulee and Douglas Creek and across the wheat fields of the
Waterville Plateau to Mansfield, a Douglas County town about 75 miles north of
Wenatchee. The last train ran in March 1985. Now that corridor is being
reimagined, and the Mansfield Branch Line Trail promises to be a unique gravel
trail experience. It could also become a powerful illustration of how a trail
can bring economic growth to rural communities. You can follow the project on TREAD's project
page.
Stronger Together,
Right in Our Backyard
Some of the best examples of the conference theme are a lot
closer to Tacoma. Sujata Goel, Government and External Relations Administrator
for King County, presented on a project dear to my heart: the Foothills Trail
bridge over the White River near Buckley. It was a great look at the scores of
details that had to be worked out to get it built. The $16
million bridge was paid for by a King County Parks levy, the City of
Buckley, Pierce County, the Washington Wildlife and Recreation Program, and the
Foothills Rails-to-Trails Coalition. Five partners, one bridge. None of them
could have built it alone.
The part of her talk I found most interesting was what
happened in August 2025, when a semi-truck struck the SR 410 bridge just
downstream and WSDOT closed it in both directions. That bridge normally carries
about 22,000 vehicles a day between Buckley and Enumclaw, and drivers suddenly
faced a 38-mile detour to cover a one-mile crossing. For a town like Buckley,
which has no hospital, that's a serious problem. But the trail bridge had been
designed and built to carry emergency vehicles for exactly this kind of
situation, and King County opened it around the clock to walkers, cyclists, and
first responders. King County now calls it a lifeline between Buckley and
Enumclaw. A choice that may have looked like an extra expense at the design
stage turned out to be one of the smartest decisions in the whole project.
The Most Poignant
Moment
For me, the most poignant moment of the conference was the
keynote. Ian Mackay was an avid cyclist and nature lover until a 2008 bike
crash left him paralyzed from the neck down. He battled years of depression
before he found a way back outside, riding the bike paths around his home in
Port Angeles and going just a little farther each time. In 2016 he rode his
power wheelchair the length of Washington, from Canada to Oregon, and that ride
grew into Ian's Ride, a nonprofit that
advocates for complete, connected trails and routes for all abilities. Since
then he has ridden
nearly 500 miles across the state from east to west, helped start the Ride
Tahoma event, and in 2022 set a Guinness
World Record for the most miles traveled in 24 hours in a mouth-controlled
power wheelchair.
I feel really fortunate to have heard him tell his story in
person. His journey offers a special insight into the value of trails, and I'd
challenge anyone to hear him speak and come away without an appreciation of how
trails have given him a way to transcend his limitations. There's a book, Ian's Ride: A Long-Distance Journey to Joy
by Karen Polinsky, and it's worth your time. But I don't think any book can
capture his personality the way hearing him speak does. If you ever get the
chance, go.
Where I Land
Stronger Together isn't just a nice slogan. I've come to
believe it's the only model that actually works for trails. Agencies can't do
it alone. Advocacy groups can't do it alone.
For TWBC, I think that means three things. Show up when your hands are needed, because a few hours at a trail work party does more than you might expect. Show up when your voice is needed, because when grant applications are in front of the funding board or maintenance budgets are on the chopping block in Olympia, letters and comments from riders matter. And show up for trail users who aren't like us, because the equestrians, hikers, paddlers, and adaptive riders fighting for their trails are fighting for ours too.