Gateway to Glacier trail nearly complete
About 100 people attended a grand opening celebration Oct. 14 for the new Gateway to Glacier Trail connecting Coram to West Glacier.
Save for a few small details, the paved path, which follows U.S. 2 and utilizes a couple of side roads, is nearly complete.
The $850,000 project is six years in the making, noted organizer Val Parsons, who spearheaded the effort.
“This trail is a wonderful addition to the Middle Fork corridor,” Parsons told the crowd, saying it was a safe way for the slow traveler to make their way up and down the canyon.
With completion of the route, the path now extends from Hungry Horse to West Glacier. There are plans to make a path from Columbia Falls to the Bad Rock Canyon, which could end up with two routes — one along U.S. 2 and a second route on Columbia Falls Aluminum Co. land which runs along the Flathead River. Negotiations are still underway to create the path on CFAC property.
When the state Department of Transportation finishes a new bridge over the South Fork of the Flathead River, it too will have a bike-pedestrian path.
“This trail is a lot of people coming together. It wasn’t just our group,” Parsons noted, as she thanked a host of entities that made it possible, including Flathead County, MDT, contractors and engineers, dozens of volunteers and donors, and many local businesses.
The Gateway group raised $58,000 for future maintenance of the trail.
The bulk of the funding came from the federal Community Transportation Enhancement program, with a 13 percent match from the state that normally is raised by local funds. The county dedicated all of its final CTEP funding toward the path.
The Gateway Trail group is also financing a welcome kiosk in Hungry Horse that’s being built by ironworker Jeffrey Funk of Bigfork. The structure, which will have a roof, will be a place of respite for bicyclists and community members. Most it is being built from scrap iron from the Old Steel Bridge that used to span the Flathead River in Kalispell.
Funk said he hopes to have it up by the end of this month.