1.3 hr
Overview
In 2014, trail crews worked on a 1.5 mile extension to complete a parallel route to Fort Clatsop’s Fort to Sea Trail. The entire Kwis Kwis Trail, now 3.65 miles long, takes an undulating course as it winds around the secondary forest in the northern section of the Fort Clatsop unit of the Lewis and Clark National Historical Park, and it offers an alternative route for part of the way if you are doing the Fort to Sea Hike as an in and out excursion. It can also form a trip in itself if combined with the Fort to Sea Trail for a shady loop that includes a few old-growth trees, extensive wetlands, and a viewpoint. The trails are well-signed, and large maps are posted at most junctions. As for the name, ‘Kwis kwis’ is the Native American rendition of the initial repetitive ‘chip-chip’ of a chipmunk’s alarm call. Go into the Visitor Center to pay your entrance fee, which is good for seven days. Then walk back across the parking area to a hiker/picnic table sign. Keep right to walk through a picnic area, and reach a four-way junction. Take the middle trail, the Clay Pit Trail. This narrow, undulating, rooty trail takes you through a dark Sitka spruce/western hemlock wood of ponds and ditches that were dug out to supply low-grade clay for making bricks in the first half of the 20th century. Dense thickets of salmonberry and drooping slopes of sword fern and deer fern add to the lush ambience. Take a steep stepped trail up, and wind through younger forest to reach the junction with the Fort to Sea Trail. Go right here, and cross Fort Clatsop Road to follow a gravel tread through thickets of salal and a wounded woodland of conifers snapped off during the Great Coastal Gale of December 2007. Foxglove and elderberry thrive in the sunny spots. Cross a footbridge, and then make a right at the Fort to Sea-Kwis Kwis Trail East Junction. Switchback down to cross a footbridge over a creek, and then cross a second small gully. Continue above a creek under a canopy of spruce and hemlock. The trail rises and switchbacks over a c
Trail Stats
0.0 km
385 m
112 m
0 m
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Photos
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