Steigerwald Lake National Wildlife Refuge

Steigerwald Lake National Wildlife Refuge spreads across nine hundred acres of restored bottomland between Washougal and the Columbia River. The trail network — Mountain View, Refuge River, and the Gibbons Creek Wildlife Art segment — connects through two foot bridges and a series of levees that reopened in 2022 after a twenty-five-million-dollar habitat restoration project tore out an old flood-control levee and reconnected Gibbons Creek to the river floodplain.

Birds are the reason to come. More than two hundred species of waterfowl and songbirds use the refuge through the year — sandhill cranes through fall migration, tundra swans wintering on the lake, herons and bitterns year-round, warblers in the willow corridors. Interpretive sculpture along the Gibbons Creek leg names what to look for and where. Mount Hood rises across the river to the south, full-frame from the elevated Mountain View Trail.

The walking is flat and gravel-surfaced — under sixty feet of total gain across nearly seven miles. The Refuge River Trail allows leashed dogs; the hiker-only trails do not. The Mountain View levee has no shade, no wind protection, and no shelter from rain. Plan accordingly.