PORT ANGELES — Funding has been secured and a contractor lined up to repair a 280-foot-long stretch of the Spruce Railroad Trail that was buried under a mudslide this winter.
Olympic National Park spokeswoman Penny Wagner said funding will come from the National Park Service Transportation Program with federal highways funding. She did not have a dollar figure for the cost of the project.
Bruch & Bruch Construction of Port Angeles, which did the work on paving the Spruce Railroad Trail and reinforcing the McFee and Daley Rankin tunnels, has been selected to do the repair work. The trail was paved for three miles between the parking lots at East Beach Road and Camp David Road along the north shore of Lake Crescent so the path can be used by pedestrians, cyclists and people with disabilities.
Bruch & Bruch completed the trail in November 2020, but the public didn’t get to use the section of trail between the two tunnels for very long as there was a major landslide on Jan. 3 after several days of heavy rain.
Wagner said the slide is about 280 feet wide and that an estimated 3,000 cubic yards of material collapsed onto the trail. Some estimates suggest the slide is 10 to 15 feet deep in some areas.
Wagner said there’s no timeline to begin work, but that it is expected to start when conditions are dry enough. She said an update will be posted on www.tinyurl.com/s3dwxzcs as soon as a work schedule is established.
