If you loaded your bike onto the rack sometime in July, drove out Argonne, crossed the river, and turned onto Upriver Drive expecting the Camp Sekani lot to be back to normal by now, you probably turned around confused. The gate is still there. The signs are still up. And if you only read the headlines from mid June, when the Upriver Fire tore through the park, you'd assume the whole 1,000 acre trail system between Beacon Hill and Sekani is off limits.
It isn't. Most of it never closed at all.
What Actually Burned, And What Didn't
The Upriver Fire started June 16 and moved fast through the eastern end of the trail network, the section closest to Upriver Drive that everyone calls Camp Sekani. It burned homes. It took a life. It shut the entire park down for weeks while crews worked out whether it was even safe to walk in.
But the number that changes how you should think about this summer is a lot smaller than the acreage headlines suggested. Melinda Dupree, president of Evergreen East, the mountain bike alliance that helps steward the trail system, told the Spokesman-Review that Beacon Hill and Camp Sekani together have 49 miles of trail, and only nine or 10 of those miles were actually touched by the fire, according to reporting from July 16. That's a fifth of the system, not the whole thing.
The disc golf course at the base of the trail network wasn't hit hard either, according to the city's own update from that first walkthrough. Signage burned. Some wood ramps burned. But Parks Director Garrett Jones has said the trail base itself came through better than it might have.
What's Open Right Now
Here's the split, as of early August:
| Access point | Status |
|---|---|
| West side of Beacon Hill, including Shields Park | Open, never closed |
| Minnehaha Park access areas | Open |
| Disc golf course | Open |
| Camp Sekani trail network (east side) | Closed, hazard trees being removed |
| Camp Sekani parking lot | Closed, then scheduled for construction |
If your usual loop starts from Shields Park or drops in through Minnehaha, you've had full access this entire time. The confusion comes from the fact that people use "Beacon Hill" and "Camp Sekani" almost interchangeably when they're really talking about two ends of the same ridge, one of which burned and one of which didn't.
Why Nobody Will Give You A Firm Reopening Date
This is the part that actually matters if you're trying to plan around it. It isn't that the damage is uniquely severe. It's that the city doesn't have a standing budget line for this kind of repair. Jones told the Spokesman-Review in mid June that there's no wildfire restoration line item in the parks department budget, which means every dollar spent clearing hazard trees or rebuilding trail sections has to be found rather than simply allocated.
The work is happening in a specific order because of that. As of the city's July 9 update, the Washington Department of Natural Resources had just started felling hazard trees, a job expected to take about two weeks. Only after that can staff move to the next phase: assessing erosion and trail alterations, then building an actual reopening plan with worklists and volunteer opportunities. Each step waits on the one before it. There isn't a countdown clock because the process genuinely can't run one yet.
Dupree has said she's confident the community will bring the trails back "to where they were or make them even better." That confidence is worth something. Evergreen East has done this kind of volunteer trail work before, including building 2.4 miles of new single track at the Etter Ranch addition near Antoine Peak. But confidence isn't a date, and right now nobody in a position to know is offering one.
The Parking Lot Is Its Own Complication
Here's a detail that would be easy to miss if you weren't paying attention before the fire even started. The city already had plans, unrelated to any of this, to pave and expand the Camp Sekani parking lot. That work is scheduled to begin in August, according to the same July 16 reporting. Jones has said he expects the trails to reopen before that construction wraps up, but he hasn't said which comes first, or by how much.
So even in the best case scenario where DNR finishes hazard tree removal on schedule and Evergreen East gets volunteer crews onto the damaged sections quickly, the main lot you'd normally use to access Camp Sekani may still be a construction zone. The city opened an overflow dirt lot on the east side of Minnehaha Park as a workaround while the Sekani lot sits closed, so that's worth knowing if you're heading out that direction.
This Isn't The First Time
Beacon Hill has burned before. In 2018, the similarly named Upriver Beacon Fire started in nearly the same stretch of the ridge and burned more than 100 acres. Only one home was lost that time, and there were no deaths. The trails came back. The community that maintains them now is the same one that rebuilt them then.
That history doesn't make this summer's fire smaller. Fourteen homes and one life is a heavier toll than 2018's. But it does mean the volunteer infrastructure that will eventually reopen the damaged nine or 10 miles has done exactly this kind of work before, on exactly this hillside.
Where To Ride Or Hike While You Wait
If you're looking for other places to burn off the itch this month, Dupree pointed to a handful of options in that same July 16 interview: Mica Peak, Saltese Uplands, Riverside State Park, Mount Spokane State Park, and Antoine Peak. Antoine Peak in particular has been growing. The county added the 231 acre Etter Ranch parcel a few years back, and the Trentwood Trailhead near East Wellesley Avenue opened with a paved lot, 20 stalls, and dedicated space for horse trailers, giving access to trails built partly by Evergreen East volunteers.
And the corridor keeps expanding even while Sekani recovers. In April, the Spokane County Commission voted to conserve the Fancher Property, a nearly 80 acre plot of ponderosa pine and balsamroot just north of Camp Sekani, using more than $2 million from the county's Conservation Futures program, according to Spokesman-Review coverage from that vote. That property connects directly to the existing Beacon Hill recreation area. The trail network residents rely on isn't shrinking long term. It's absorbing a bad summer while it keeps growing around the edges.
The Short Version
Most of the trail system you use is open and has been the whole time. The piece that isn't open doesn't have a date because the funding process has to catch up to the damage before anyone can promise a timeline. And once it does reopen, you may still be dodging a paving crew in the parking lot for a while. None of that is the story the June headlines told, but it's the one that actually determines your next few weekends.
If you're the kind of person who tracks these small shifts because you've lived near this ridge for years, you're not alone. Kristin Vanos grew up in this corridor and still pays attention to the same details her neighbors do, from trail conditions to what's happening a few miles down Bigelow Gulch. If you ever want a straight, local read on this area beyond the trailhead, reach out anytime. And if a home near here is ever part of your plans, get your free home valuation whenever you're ready.
