This short article from a 1991 Sierra Club newsletter discusses the origin of the Nordic Pass Trail at Snoqualmie Pass.
Click here to view a PDF of the article shown below: Article Nordic Pass Trail Completed 1991
Here is additional information provided by Gary Westerlund in a trail report posted on NWHikers.net:
I appreciate all the interest in the Nordic Pass Trail. I started the Nordic Pass Trail back in 1988 with help from Mark Lawler and Pat Stokes. I had cross country skied in the area for several years and was upset with the ski areas taking over the trails I had skied on for free and grooming them and charging trail fees. At that time there already was a marked ski trail from Rockdale Lake to the middle Nordic Pass – a rather dark and gloomy destination. There are actually three low spots in the ridge. The current Nordic Pass Trail goes through the south low spot which is a much brighter area, closest to Mt. Catherine.
I wrote letters to the Forest Service complaining about the situation and proposed the Nordic Pass Trail. We had a field trip with the Forest Service on July 8th, 1988 when we walked the lower half of the proposed trail to Hyak Lake. The Forest Service approved the trail and we started to build the trail. The first winter, we flagged the route for Forest Service approval. It took us two more winters to put up the blue diamonds marking the route and by March of 1991 the trail was finished. By the way, we did not use ladders to put up the diamonds. We tried to put up the diamonds near maximum snow depth and reach as high as we could.
The trail was originally a cross country ski trail, but now probably more snowshoers use the trail than skiers. This type of cross country skiing has fallen out of favor. Skiers these days seem to prefer easy groomed trails or straight up and down telemark skiing. I definitely welcome snowshoers to use the trail. As one post noted, it is use it or lose it.
I was going to attach a couple of pdf’s about the trail to this post, but couldn’t find the way to do it. One pdf is the original agreement with the Forest Service. The other is an early article about the trail. If interested, you can request them from me at nordicpasstrail@yahoo.com.
As a side note, the Common Corridor up the road to Windy Pass was indirectly due to the Nordic Pass Trail effort. We were objecting to the ski area building cross over trails between the Hyak slopes (now Summit East) and Ski Acres (now Summit Central) which impacted the Nordic Pass Trail. The ski area proposed to replace the Nordic Pass Trail with the Common Corridor so backcountry travelers could still have access to Silver Peak. The Forest Service approved the cross over trails, the Common Corridor and continuing the Nordic Pass Trail.
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