Changes may trim some fees for hikers

By Craig Welch
Seattle Times staff reporter

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Hikers soon will be able to use hundreds of popular Northwest backcountry trails this year without having to buy a $30 pass as the Forest Service overhauls its fee-for-use program to make it more palatable to outdoor enthusiasts.

Meanwhile, federal land managers and state-park officials may, for the first time, offer Washington and Oregon residents a universal pass that would give them access to nearly all outdoor recreation sites — from national parks to state parks to national-forest trails — in both states.

The universal pass likely would replace the $65 annual "Golden Eagle" pass, which allows users access to just federal trails and sites. The price of the new pass hasn't been determined.

"One of the things the public has told us over and over again is there are too many passes and too many fees, and it's something we've heard that we need to take a look at, and we are," said Rex Holloway, spokesman for the Forest Service's regional office in Portland.

Since 1997, those using Washington's and Oregon's 24 million acres of national forests have been subject to a trial program in which the Forest Service requires visitors to buy a $5-a-day or $30-a-year Northwest Forest Pass to park at various trailheads, picnic areas and boat-launch sites. The idea: With recreation booming at the same time timber harvests plummet, the agency is looking to collect more money from users to help maintain a system that, in the Northwest alone, includes more than 530 campgrounds and 19,000 miles of backcountry trails.

But the agency has taken heat from the public because the fees are haphazardly enforced and seem inconsistently applied. Users complain that sometimes they pay for use of areas with no visible improvements while another area might have paved parking, picnic benches and boat-launch pads and cost nothing.

"The public is more supportive of fees when they can see where their money is going," said Jocelyn Biro, fee coordinator for the agency's regional headquarters. "If you pull into an area with picnic tables, fire grills, running water and flush toilets, you can see why it costs money to maintain. But if you pull off a dirt road to access a trailhead with no development, visitors don't see any costs, even though in some areas those are very expensive to maintain."

New fee criteria in works

Next year, after extensive internal review, public comments and congressional hearings, the Forest Service plans to use new criteria for determining when users should pay. As a result, while fees are assessed for more than 1,200 locations in the two states, the agency expects that number to drop as much as 30 percent.

While the bulk of pay sites have always been trailheads, 400 or more of those sites will soon be free as the agency turns its fee collection more to picnic areas, launches and interpretive sites with more visible improvements.

"The strongest component of the fee-demonstration program has always been trailheads, but you're going to see that shift," Biro said. "Basically, those areas you don't see a lot of development at, unless they get heavy, heavy use, you probably won't see a fee."

Opponents of the fee program, who criticize the "commercialization" of national forests, view the changes as a cynical ploy to make user fees seem more benign.

"In the short term, people will breathe a sigh of relief and say, 'Whew, that's 400 paces I don't have to pay for,' " said Scott Silver, with Wild Wilderness, which opposes the fees. "But it also takes the pressure off the Forest Service, which is trying desperately to convince Congress that the public likes the program and it should be made permanent and expanded."

The forest-pass program has done little to dent a $41 million backlog in Northwest forest-maintenance projects, but it is generating a healthy $3.5 million to $6.5 million a year, which contributes to maintenance. Eighty percent of the fees collected are required to go back to the sites covered by the passes. And, Biro said, more and more people are buying passes every year.

Concession concerns

The agency is compiling a list of which sites will be free next season and which will require payment; it will release the list next month, when it's final.

In the Mount Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest, a pass is required at 152 trailheads and not at 19, said Forest Service spokeswoman Betty Blodgett. That number isn't expected to change significantly.

In the Gifford Pinchot National Forest, however, "they're removing quite a few trailheads" from the pass program, Biro said. It's not clear how the change will affect the Olympic, Wenatchee and Okanogan national forests.

But Silver, of Wild Wilderness, predicts that the next step, which he says is happening in Deschutes National Forest in Oregon, will be to give concessionaires — people paid by the Forest Service to maintain a campground, for example — a greater cut of the fees generated at those sites than they now get.

Craig Welch: 206-464-2093 or cwelch@seattletimes.com

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