A long detour on the Corvallis to the Sea hiking trail is no longer needed.
The group that manages the trail announced it has opened a new stretch to replace a portion that closed in the fall of 2025 when the property it sits on was sold and the new owner declined to allow public access.
The closure led to a five-mile detour near the western end of the trail where hikers had to instead take a stretch of the trail meant for cyclists.
"They get to stay in the woods, walk on decommissioned forest service roads and a little bit of single-track trail on four different private properties," said C2C board member Steve McLay.
The largest delays came from time spent cutting new trails, dealing with blackberry brambles along a portion, and getting access to federal land.
“The U.S. Forest Service worked with us really well, but of course with the process of putting trails on federal land there’s a bunch of specialists that need to look at it: botanists, road guys and endangered species specialists and such,” said McLay. “So it had to guy and sit on a bunch of different people’s desks for review before getting finalized.”
That step then allowed C2C to contact the private land owners in the area to ask for permission to use or reroute the trail on their land, including timber companies Campbell Global, Manulife, Starker Forests, Inc and Coast Range Conifers.
McLay said an interaction with Campbell Global summed up what most of the requests to use private land were like.
“All it was was a phone call to those guys,” he said. “Just, ‘hey, here’s what’s going on. Are you going to let us keep the trail on your property?’ And without hesitation they said, ‘yeah, go for it.’”
McLay said C2C encountered almost no resistance after the initial declination of use that led to the rerouting. He likes to think that it’s a good sign of the reputation of C2C and of the businesses in the community.
