The Saddle Mountain State Natural Area could reopen in August.

Saddle Mountain, the tallest peak in Clatsop County with one of the region’s popular hiking trails, has remained mostly off-limits to the public since state parks shut down because of the coronavirus pandemic in the spring of 2020.

Aside from a brief window in 2021, the state natural area east of Seaside has been closed due to a host of bureaucratic holdups and logistical complications.

The Oregon Parks and Recreation Department hopes to reopen Saddle Mountain in August, when hikers can again challenge themselves on the 2.5-mile trail to the 3,288-foot summit with sweeping views of the North Coast.

But things will look a bit different.

“There have been a lot of disappointed folks that the park has been closed,” said Ben Cox, the park manager at the Nehalem Bay Management Unit, which oversees Saddle Mountain. “And it has sounded — when I hear myself talk to people on the phone or in person and just sort of lay out what has happened, the timeline of events, I hear myself and it kind of sounds like a lot of excuses.

“But it’s just been a perfect storm of if it could go wrong, it went wrong. If the timing could be bad, it was bad. If a regulatory piece was going to bite us, it bit us. So I’ll be glad to get it open. The last thing in the world we want to do is have it closed.”

Failed bridge

Many state parks reopened within months after the pandemic emergency was declared in Oregon, but the process was much slower at Saddle Mountain, which did not reopen until the spring of 2021.

Several months later, a failed log bridge along the trail triggered another closure. Upon closer inspection, Cox said, the issues were much deeper.

“We knew that we had some problems with the water system up there, and with the septic system for the flush toilet that was up there … And so we took the opportunity while the park was closed to really start digging into those problems,” he said. “We had some sort of Band-Aids on them and discovered some pretty major failures.”

The trail was also in need of maintenance. Although rough terrain has always been a part of the Saddle Mountain experience, the defects had accumulated over time and raised concerns about emergency response.

“We really did a very careful assessment of the trail,” Cox said. “Our community partners especially, and … really essentially the fire departments who respond up on Saddle Mountain for rescues for folks that get hurt up there, had very sort of loudly and clearly said, ‘Man, this trail is in pretty bad shape for us.’”

The state initially sought to replace the failed bridge, but due to the difficulty of transporting materials up the steep trail, decided to reroute the trail and go around the bridge.

The ground disturbance, however, triggered a mandatory review from the State Historic Preservation Office and consultation with tribal partners. Saddle Mountain, known to the Clatsop as “Swallalahoost,” features in Native American tribal legends.

“Saddle Mountain is a culturally significant place, very special to the tribes,” Cox said. “We’re very sensitive to that.”

The process of handling the struggling septic system also proved to be logistically complicated and time-consuming. Park staff decided to abandon the flush toilet and water system and install vault toilets.

The installation required consultation with Clatsop County community development and environmental health officials, a set of bureaucratic hoops that influenced the timeline for reopening.

County planning staff issued the final development permit for the vault toilets on Wednesday, according to Gail Henrikson, the county’s community development director, seven months after the initial permit application was submitted in November.

Installing vault toilets also involved delegating work to an outside contractor, but the state found it difficult to find a contractor willing to do the work.

The state also hired a contractor for the trail improvements. “Anybody can throw a bucket of gravel on the trail, but really to do it and to do it right, something that will hopefully last a long time and wear as a tread surface better than what we have, was what we were hoping for,” Cox said.

The Oregon Parks and Recreation Department, like many state agencies, has struggled with persistent staffing challenges, further complicating the renovations. A shortage of seasonal workers — last year, Cox was able to fill only a fraction of the available park ranger assistant positions — meant rangers were spread thin.

The state had to balance the work at Saddle Mountain with the demands at other busy, popular parks. “We had to prioritize the parks that were open and being inundated with people … Some of this work that we’ve recently completed at Saddle Mountain could have been completed sooner from a regulatory standpoint. We didn’t have to wait,” Cox said. “But I had to choose to spend the labor resources where they were most needed.”

A changing park

The cost of the renovations at Saddle Mountain will near $150,000 before the state natural area can reopen.

Visitors can expect some hiccups and future disruptions. Gabion mattresses, which are designed to prevent erosion along the trail, will continue to need work. A struggling bridge across Grindy Creek may soon require repair or replacement.

Beyond the vault toilets and maintenance on the trail, a few other things about Saddle Mountain will look different. The park will now be day use only, due to issues maintaining the 10-site campground.

“There was a lot of vandalism occurring,” Cox said. “There was a lot of theft. We had a self-registration station with an iron ranger and people were literally putting chains on it and ripping it out of the ground and stealing the cash. A lot of shenanigans.”

The picnic area is newly renovated, and many of the older trees have been removed so that visitors can sit at tables and see the mountain’s peak. And, in what Cox refers to as a “silver lining,” the natural habitat has been given a chance to flourish.

Along with rare wildflowers, Saddle Mountain is home to the threatened Oregon silverspot butterfly. On Thursday, the park led a larval release on the mountain, a yearly practice that has continued during the closure in an effort to bolster the butterfly population.

“The area being closed for two years really gave the whole area sort of a chance to take a breath and not experience a bunch of human traffic,” Cox said. “It gave creatures and plants a chance to reestablish … so it’s sort of revitalized itself a little bit and that’s a positive that we’ll take.”