For years I’ve dreamed of hiking the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT) from Mexico to Canada in one long hike. But the excuses (school, job, bills and other perceived responsibilities) have so far kept me from committing to making that long walk year after year. Instead, I’ve consoled myself with stories of other peoples’ treks on the PCT, Appalachian Trail (AT), Continental Divide Trail (CDT), and Pacific Northwest Trail (PNT), and by obsessively hiking, mtn biking, and backcountry skiing my way around the Pacific Northwest.
Over the years, as I tried not to think too much about the PCT, I covered some incredibly wild and beautiful country with good friends. I hiked most of the major trails through Hells Canyon and the Seven Devils; traversed the Selkirk Mountains of northeast Washington and the Idaho Panhandle; plotted and hiked long routes across the Bitterroot Mountains on the Montana and Idaho border; and trekked across vast swaths of the Salmo-Priest, Selway-Bitterroot, Frank Church, and Wenaha Tucannon Wilderness Areas. These beautiful, diverse, and mostly remote and lightly travelled trails inspired me to keep filling in the gaps by exploring other adjacent mountains and trails, and to plan longer trips through more obscure backcountry lands on historic trails and routes between the classic areas I’d already explored.
In 2007, on a long loop hike through Idaho’s Frank Church Wilderness with my accomplished thru-hiker friend Dick Vogel (trail name “Hike On”), the idea of linking up a long-distance trail through the Inland Northwest, a loop I was sure would be well over a thousand miles long, was born. On long hikes with good friends, talk regularly turns to favorite hikes and future trips. This day we recalled the ranges we’d walked across the region. The list of places, mountains, canyons, rivers, and wilderness areas rolled from our lips like poetry. I remember when the idea came crashing into my skull like a giant falling snag, stopping me dead in my tracks. I realized then that we had just come up with a new world-class, long-distance hiking route right in our own backyard.
I spent the next several years exploring route possibilities with friends, filling in the blank spots on my mental map of the region. In the off-trail season, I bought maps, read through guidebooks, and searched online for info on the lesser known routes and trails that would connect the bigger, more popular and well documented places and trails. I became convinced that this dream of a trail that would start and end in my hometown of Spokane, WA was not only possible, but something I had to at least try to make a reality.
I had another reason to believe my idea wasn’t all that nuts. In 2009, another dream of a regional long-distance hiking trail in the Pacific Northwest had come true when Congress officially blessed it with National Scenic Trail status. The 1,200 mile Pacific Northwest National Scenic Trail, which was first proposed and explored by Ron Strickland over 30 years before, was now a recognized route. The PNT’s success and growing popularity, largely due to Stickland and the Pacific Northwest Trail Association (PNTA), a group he helped form, was more proof that my INT route, which shares a stretch of the PNT across the Idaho Panhandle, had a chance.
In 2011 I began to work with an EWU GIS student on a map of the proposed route. Thanks to his hours of volunteer work, a draft map was completed in December 2011.
In early 2012, with a professional looking map of the trail to compliment the highlighted routes on the tattered and worn forest service and other maps I’d used to piece together the trail, I created this web site and formed the non-profit group Friends of the Inland Northwest Trail to help make my idealistic idea a reality. In 2012, I am continuing to ground-truth sections of the trail and am doing what I can to organize local support in my spare time. I’m also starting work on a guidebook and am scheming to thru-hike the INT in the near future. Here are a few photos that help illustrate what we’ll be up to out on the trail route this summer:
Whether you’re a day hiker, weekend backpacker, inspiring long-distance hiker, seasoned thru-hiker, or equestrian, if you have a passion for or interest in exploring the Inland Northwest’s trails and wild places and are excited about the potential for this trail, please consider supporting Friends of the Inland Northwest Trail.
Derrick Knowles, Inland Northwest Trail Founder
“May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view. May your mountains rise into and above the clouds.” Edward Abbey
Friends of the Inland Northwest Trail 