Drive Highway 104 past the town of Port Gamble this month and you'll notice a gravel lot that wasn't there a year ago, a restroom building, and a sign pointing hikers and mountain bikers toward something called the North Gateway Trailhead. No ribbon-cutting fanfare, no billboard. Just a new way into 3,500 acres of forest that Kitsap County has been sitting on for over a decade.
That quiet opening on April 10, 2026 matters more than its size suggests. Port Gamble Forest Heritage Park holds more than 60 miles of trail, the largest connected trail network in the county by a wide margin. But until this spring, reaching its north end meant working your way in from elsewhere in the park. For anyone living in Kingston, Hansville, or the north end of the peninsula, the park's best acreage sat just far enough out of easy reach that it stayed a weekend destination rather than a Tuesday-after-work option. That's the part worth understanding before you plan your fall hikes: the trail mileage didn't change this year. The friction of getting to it did.
What Actually Opened
The new trailhead sits at 3800 NE Carver Drive, just off Highway 104 via Gamble Way NE, right at the park's north end near the town of Port Gamble. According to Kitsap County Parks, it includes:
- 75 parking stalls
- A restroom facility
- Direct access to the park's mountain bike ride park
- An extension of the paved Sound to Olympics Trail, a shared-use path that now runs straight into the new lot
None of that sounds dramatic on paper. But it's the first purpose-built entry point on the park's north side, and it was designed specifically to make the rugged interior of the park reachable for people who aren't willing to drive to the opposite end and hike in first.
A Decade of Work Before the Gravel Went Down
The trailhead itself is new, but the ground under it isn't. The Kitsap Forest & Bay Coalition spent 2014 to 2017 acquiring and protecting the land that eventually became Port Gamble Forest Heritage Park. The North Kitsap Trails Association marked the trailhead's opening with a community celebration in May 2026, using the occasion to walk through the park's full timeline: the original land acquisition, the creation of a management framework, the build-out of the mountain bike ride park, ongoing timber protection work, ten years of trail development, and now this expanded north entry.
That history matters for one practical reason. This isn't a developer amenity or a tourism play. It's the payoff of a long, unglamorous conservation effort finally getting an access point that matches the size of what it protects.
Why This Changes Where People Actually Hike This Fall
For years, Kitsap's default fall hiking list has stayed remarkably consistent. Green Mountain, reached via the Gold Creek and Wildcat trails, is the region's go-to after-work climb: a 6.3-mile round trip to a 1,639-foot summit with views across the Sound and the Olympics. Guillemot Cove Nature Reserve, 184 acres on Hood Canal, draws people for its quieter charm, the whimsical Stump House, and a stretch of shoreline where river otters show up often enough that regulars expect them. Clear Creek Trail offers the opposite experience entirely: eight flat, easy miles of boardwalk and gravel through salmon-filled wetlands, the kind of trail you take with a stroller or a pair of binoculars rather than trekking poles.
Port Gamble Forest Heritage Park was always bigger than any of those three combined. It just wasn't as convenient. The new north entry doesn't replace Green Mountain or Guillemot Cove. It gives North Kitsap residents a genuine fourth option that didn't function as an everyday choice before this spring, because getting to the parts of the park worth exploring meant a longer drive and a longer approach than a quick evening hike could justify.
Here's how the four stack up heading into fall:
| Trail or Park | Size / Distance | Character | Best For |
|---|---|---|---|
| Port Gamble Forest Heritage Park (North Gateway access) | 3,500 acres, 60+ miles of trail | Forest interior, mixed hiking and mountain biking | A new weekday option for North Kitsap residents |
| Green Mountain (Gold Creek and Wildcat trails) | 6.3-mile loop, 1,639-foot summit | Steady climb to Sound and Olympics views | A quick after-work workout |
| Guillemot Cove Nature Reserve | 184 acres | Quiet shoreline, the Stump House, occasional otters | Late-autumn color and solitude |
| Clear Creek Trail | 8 miles, flat | Boardwalk and gravel through wetlands | Strollers, birders, easy laps |
If you've hiked Green Mountain a dozen times and never once made it into Port Gamble's interior, the north entry is the reason to finally go. If you live closer to Kingston or Port Gamble than to Bremerton or Silverdale, this trailhead is now the closest way into serious trail mileage without driving across the county first.
One Detour Worth Knowing Before You Head South
If your fall plans point toward South Kitsap instead, particularly anywhere near Harper or the Southworth ferry corridor, there's a construction detour worth building into your route now rather than discovering it at the barricade. Kitsap County is in the middle of the Harper Estuary Barrier Correction project, replacing an undersized culvert with a 120-foot bridge to restore fish passage. SE Olympia Drive is closed for the duration of the work between SE Southworth Drive and Inlet Lane SE, with a signed detour routing traffic through SE Southworth Drive and Nokomis Road SE. The county expects the project complete by late fall 2026, which means the closure will likely still be in effect for most of this hiking season before it wraps.
It's unrelated to what's happening at Port Gamble, but it's the kind of seasonal friction that catches people off guard if they haven't checked before loading the car.
Timing It Right
If foliage is part of why you hike in the first place, Guillemot Cove tends to hold its color into late autumn, with the moss greening back up as the rain returns and the maples along the trail turning before that. Green Mountain's exposed summit sections lose their green faster given the elevation, so if you're chasing color rather than views, the shoreline trails are the better bet later into the season. Port Gamble's interior, still new to most of the county's hikers, is worth watching for the same reason. Nobody has a well-worn opinion yet on when its canopy peaks, which might be the most honest reason to go find out yourself this year.
What ties all of this together is simple. The biggest piece of protected forest in Kitsap County just became easier to reach for an entire section of the peninsula that used to treat it as a special occasion rather than a regular option. That's not a small thing for anyone who measures a neighborhood by what's actually walkable from home, whether that's a quick loop after work or a longer weekend hike worth planning around.
We spend a lot of our time at Greater Peninsula Properties walking these same trails, watching which parks get busier and which quietly become easier to reach. If you're curious about a specific corner of Kitsap County, whether it's a trailhead, a shoreline, or a neighborhood you've been eyeing from the trail, we're happy to talk through what we know. That's most of what we do here anyway.
