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White Bluffs- North Slope, Eastern Washington


I have wanted to hike the White Bluffs for a while, just haven't set aside the time to get there. So March 22nd my nephew and I headed down towards Mattawa to hike this trail. It is quiet the drive, but the scenery is very fascinating along the way. The White Bluffs area is totally different than any hike I have been on, it is a combination of sage brush, grass, and lots and lots of sand. Gorgeous view of the Columbia River and over onto the Hanford Nuclear Reservation. The trail is fairly easy to find, well marked roads, that lead you to the Wahluke National Wildlife Refuge area. After you leave the gravel road and hit the pavement again that leads to the boat launch area it becomes a little bit confusing on where the trail actually starts, and where to park. It's best to just act like you know what your doing and pull over into the first pull out area on the right and park. The trail starts from that first pull out area and heads up the short hills that get you above the Columbia River. From there it wanders and makes a few bends, then follows the cliffs along the river. The views start as soon as you get above river level. You wander through the sage, low grass, a few flowers, more where on the way, then heads out onto the sand dunes. From there the trail becomes faint and pretty much disappears, so we headed to the high points of the dunes and started heading towards the largest one. Beautiful 360 degrees views of the surrounding landscape, lots of animal tracks, and bugs crossing back and forth arcoss the sand. The only thing missing to make it a perfect day was flip flops, a beach towel and the sound of waves crashing. Lovely weather, hardly any wind, which was nice due to I can imagine the places that the sand could lodge and cause all kinds of pain. It was such a lovely day I had to take plenty of pictures, didn't want to let any granules of sand feel left out. I think this would be a lovely place to hike in the winter, not sure how the roads would be to get there, summer would make it a scorcher with all the exposed landscape. I would defiantly advise a hat and plenty of sun screen, even in March we got a little bit of color. I will post more pictures of the dunes, like I said couldn't let any sand feel left out of the pictures.
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