New Dishman Hills Conservancy property will link two trail systems

Mar. 21—Dan Wilson has a lot of trails in his head.

The property manager for the Dishman Hills Conservancy has mental maps of both the existing trails on the conservancy’s properties in the hills south of Spokane Valley and of ones that are still to be built.

On Monday, he and Tim Theis, the conservancy’s resource development officer, walked one of the latter — a short stretch that will begin on a cliff above the Phillips Creek trailhead and jut north, past willows that have been browsed by moose and in between scat piles of varying origin.

“This is going to be a cool trail,” Wilson said. “It’s just got a lot of cool stuff.”

It will also be the realization of a long-term goal.

The trail will traverse a 12-acre property the conservancy purchased earlier this year, and it will be the first official trail that connects the Glenrose unit with the Dishman Hills Natural Area.

Called the Keystone Connection Property, the purchase protects another piece of wildlife habitat in the Dishman Hills, a place that’s home to deer, moose, cougars, coyotes and more.

Ruth Gifford, the conservancy’s executive director, said the property furthers the organization’s mission of maintaining a continuous ecosystem in the area.

“We want that for public recreation, but we also want it as a wildlife corridor,” Gifford said.

The public’s share of land in the Dishman Hills has grown over the years. In all, about 3,400 acres in that area are protected for conservation and are home to miles of hiking and biking trails.

Prior to this purchase, the most recent boost came in the form of the MacPhee property, a 103-acre property near Ponderosa Elementary School that Spokane County purchased in 2023.

That purchase made public a major chunk of property on the east side of the Glenrose unit. But there was still a gap between Glenrose and the Dishman Hills Natural Area that couldn’t be filled.

Some hikers have used an unofficial trail there for years, either knowingly or unknowingly trespassing to make a connection between the two units.

Conservancy staff had conversations with the landowner between the two properties several times over the years. This year, the family that owned the property decided to put it up for sale, and the conservancy pounced on it.

Initially, the property included a house down below. As part of the deal, another buyer purchased the house and the conservancy took ownership of the open lands on the hillside above it. It cost the conservancy about $300,000.

“It is a great piece of property,” Gifford said. “It may be small, but it has some unique habitat on it.”

Theis said people have been wanting to see a connection between the Glenrose unit and the natural area for years.

“This was the one shot to do it,” Theis said.

Wilson, who has worked with the conservancy since 2021, said the idea had been talked about for years, and that he’d been thinking about building a trail on the 12-acre parcel for a long time.

“It’s nice to actually do it and know we’re actually going to build a trail,” he said.

It’s not ready for the public, but the trail is going to happen. The design is set and volunteers from the Spokane Mountaineers are ready to turn it into something tangible. Already he and volunteers have been on the property clearing out barbed wire and other remnants of the past.

On Monday, as he walked the property with Theis, Wilson pointed out the property boundary and the narrow notch the new trail will pass through. The area burned in the 2008 Valley View Fire, and it still shows. The hillside is mostly open, with a handful of young ponderosas reaching for the sky.

The new trail will be uphill from an unofficial path people have used for years. That’s a strategic decision. The plan is to close the unofficial trail and divert traffic onto the new one, and to let wildlife take over the lower one.

That’s a delicate balance the conservancy has to strike in the Dishman Hills.

“The deer really love this area,” Wilson said. “The deer and the moose.”