Blocked by landowner, Corvallis-to-the-Sea volunteers create new route for hikers east of Seal Rock

By BRADLEY FUQUA/Philomath News

The Corvallis-to-the-Sea Trail Partnership has completed a rerouting of the volunteer-built trail of a five-mile stretch — miles 51 to 56 westbound — that had been closed to hikers since last fall.

The closure near the end of the 60-mile trail began after a change in private land ownership east of Ona Beach near Seal Rock.

Steve McLay, a C2C board member who was serving as board president when the closure hit, said the previous owner had sold several parcels to a buyer looking to reassemble an old family homestead for his grandchildren.

“The use case for that property changed, and he was going to more actively manage it,” McLay said. “The trail wasn’t going to fit well with his vision of how he’s going to manage the property.”

The new owner, Charles P. Wilson of Seal Rock, told the Lincoln Chronicle in January that he didn’t want the approximately 1,000 hikers who make the trek each year on his property.

With the trail blocked, the only detour available to hikers was an 11-mile stretch of the C2C bike route — a workaround that stayed in place for most of the past year while the partnership worked to map and secure a new path.

The reroute the partnership eventually settled on wasn’t entirely new territory. McLay said it now follows a corridor that trail founder Gary Chapman had scouted as a possible alternate in the early 2000s while the original trail alignment was being mapped.

“We kind of had some background knowledge of what might work and what might not,” McLay said, adding that the route also meant fewer new landowners to negotiate with since it loops around the closed property and ties back into the existing trail on the west side.

Terrain played a role too. The new path climbs onto Peterson Ridge, which McLay said offers hikers heading east to west a relatively flat, multi-mile stretch late in their trip — a welcome break after 40 miles of ups and downs.

“It’s a nice respite,” he said.

Reopening the full trail required sign-off from several landowners and agencies:

• The U.S. Forest Service modified its existing permit to cover the revised route across federal land.
• Campbell Global, which had acquired a key parcel from Weyerhaeuser, agreed to honor the previous access agreement.
• Manulife updated its agreement for the Golden Pond property to shift the trail along its northern boundary.
• Starker Forests approved the tie-in connecting to the new route, granted hikers access to a water refill point on its land, and took the lead in negotiating a new agreement with Coast Range Conifers.

McLay singled out Starker Forests, a company based just outside of Philomath, for its role in pulling the pieces together.

“They were key in making this all happen,” he said. “They’re a trusted partner that other landowners could look to as a model. We really owe a lot to their cooperation and the burden we put on them. It’s a great, great, great company.”

He said he never seriously doubted the trail would reopen.

“Generally, the landowners out there are pretty receptive,” he said. “It’s real heartening, actually.”

Volunteers have cleared and built the new section largely along old, established roadbeds — including skid roads cut decades ago — which McLay said kept construction relatively straightforward. Crews also relocated a trail information kiosk from the closed property and installed new directional signs along the reroute.

Despite the closure, McLay said hiker numbers didn’t drop as much as the partnership feared. The organization tracks use by section — the trail has 11 in all — based on registrations left at kiosks along the route.

“People just want to hike the trail,” he said. “They’re like, ‘Well, bummer, at some point we’ve got to essentially get on the gravel and walk roads,’ but even that out there is still beautiful. You’re just not on a single track or stuffed back in the forest. But there’s still forest on both sides.”

Updated trail maps and guidebooks reflecting the new route are expected to be available at selected merchants in September, according to the trail partnership. Current navigation information is available at c2ctrail.org.

“We didn’t know when this final piece was going to fall into place,” he said. “This had been four or five months of stewing, and then you get that email one day that says, ‘Yeah, you’re good to go.’ We prepped everything we could, but still, you’re trying to play catch-up.”

• Brad Fuqua is the editor and publisher of Philomath News and can be reached at [email protected]