Planning a mountain hike to see fall colors? One last Pacific beach ramble before rain settles in? Washington’s three main national parks remain open, but don’t expect to ask a ranger about trail conditions — or to receive a timely response if you get hurt.
That’s the state of affairs amid a partial federal government shutdown. National parks remain open in Washington and across the country despite pleas from former national park superintendents to close the system while it’s unstaffed. (The government shutdown came after congressional Democrats refused to give enough votes to bypass a filibuster of a Republican spending bill.)
The impasse has led to the furlough of two-thirds of national park employees nationwide so far, according to the National Parks Conservation Association, which has a trickle-down effect at Mount Rainier, North Cascades and Olympic national parks. Even though gates remain open — and without any staff on hand to collect entrance fees — visitors centers are closed from the Hoh Rainforest deep in the Olympics to Paradise on the flanks of Mount Rainier.
Privately run lodges and restaurants are still open, including National Park Inn at Longmire near Mount Rainier and Lake Quinault Lodge and Kalaloch Lodge in Olympic National Park.
Bathrooms are reportedly open in the parks, according to hikers on social media and outfits with a license to operate in the park, like Olympic Hiking Co., but it is unknown if they will be cleaned and restocked. The same uncertainty goes for trash removal and other basic maintenance.
Spokespersons from all three Washington national parks are on furlough and did not respond to a request for comment Friday.
There is also a bureaucratic gray area around permits. There are no ranger stations or wilderness information centers open to process new permits, even though some reservations can still be made on Recreatrion.gov. And, of course, very few, if any, backcountry rangers are on duty to check permits.
The Mount Rainier website directs hikers with wilderness permits to look for instructions posted on the door of the Longmire and White River Wilderness information centers. Open campgrounds with first-come, first-served sites are best paid for using on-site fee boxes when available.
The combination of continued access to the open-air areas of parks (like trails and parking lots) and a lack of park staff has outfitters like Ashford-based Whittaker Mountaineering urging visitors to take exceptional measures if they visit a national park during the shutdown.
“The responsibility to protect the park shifts to you, in a very real, Leave No Trace way,” marketing manager Kristian Whittaker wrote on the company’s website.
Whittaker urged visitors to bring all their own food and water to the park, pack out every scrap of trash, use toilet kit waste bags (aka WAG bags) instead of sanitation facilities, and to carry a personal locator beacon or satellite messenger. With limited staff at the parks, weather and trail conditions may not be updated regularly and search-and-rescue missions could be delayed.
Washington Trails Association and Washington’s National Park Fund are encouraging the public to visit state and county public lands instead of national parks and national forests during the closure. WTA has paused all work parties on federal land for the duration of the shutdown.
Elsewhere, most infrastructure projects in the parks have concluded for the year. A monthlong closure of State Route 123 between Cayuse Pass and Stevens Canyon Road in Mount Rainier National Park wrapped up Sept. 30, although one lane remains closed for paving and striping. Summerlong paving projects from Longmire to Stevens Canyon Road were completed Sept. 26, according to the Mount Rainier National Park website.
But shutdown impacts are unclear for three other park projects: an ongoing renovation of Ohanapecosh Campground and scheduled geotechnical drilling at Backbone Viaduct on Stevens Canyon Road, both at Mount Rainier, and repairs on Mora Road to Rialto Beach in Olympic National Park.
As the shutdown ticks on, this year’s window for recreating in Washington’s national parks is narrowing. October is the shoulder season, with many facilities already shut down after the summer rush. For example, in North Cascades National Park, the Newhalem Visitors Center and parts of the Newhalem Creek Campground, as well as the Colonial Creek Campground, closed last month. Sunrise at Mount Rainier is slated to close at 7 p.m. on Sunday.
Few high-elevation roads in the state’s national parks remain open in winter. The last government shutdown from December 2018 to January 2019 scuttled much of the Hurricane Ridge Ski Area season and kept the gates to Paradise closed for a month.
Regardless of the shutdown, the number of closed or inaccessible national park sites in Washington has grown this year. Olympic’s Staircase entrance has been closed since July due to the Bear Creek Gulch Fire; Rainier’s Mowich entrance closed in April due to the structural unsoundness of the Carbon River Bridge; and North Cascades’ Hozomeen entrance closed in February because the Canadian border crossing there is not a designated port of entry.
