Behind Chelan Dam, the Riverwalk Loop Keeps Going Until December 1
Most people who live above Chelan Butte know the downtown loop by feel. Park near the boat launch on Emerson, cross the Woodin Avenue bridge, follow the river along the shaded side, cross back on the newer bridge, and you're done in twenty minutes. It's the walk you do with a second cup of coffee, or the one you hand off to a house guest who wants to see the water without committing to a hike.
What most people don't do is keep walking past the second bridge. The paved loop through Riverwalk Park is one mile. The trail underneath it, the one Chelan County PUD built as part of its federal license to operate the Lake Chelan hydro project, keeps going for another mile and a half toward the dam, and from there straight into a wetland restoration site most Chelan residents have driven past on Highway 97 without ever pulling in.
Riverwalk Park itself is small, twelve acres along the south end of the lake where it narrows into the Chelan River. The loop is paved, dog-friendly, and flat enough that nobody thinks of it as exercise so much as a lap. What changes the math is a second trail that starts at the same boat launch on South Emerson Street and runs upriver instead of around the park: Reach 1.
Reach 1 isn't a park amenity in the usual sense. It exists because Chelan County PUD's operating license for the hydro project on the Chelan River required public access and interpretation along the reach below the dam, and the district built the trail to satisfy that obligation. The first half mile is paved and accessible to all users. After that it narrows, but it stays walkable the rest of the way, past interpretive signs that explain what the dam actually does: it draws water from the base of the lake through an underground penstock fourteen feet in diameter, carries it two miles to a powerhouse at Chelan Falls, and generates enough clean power for roughly 30,000average Northwest homes. Whole route, boat launch to gorge overlook and back, runs a little over three miles round trip.
That's the part of the walk almost nobody up on the Butte has done, because it doesn't look like it's going anywhere. From downtown it just looks like the river gets narrower and the crowd thins out.
| Riverwalk Loop | Reach 1 Extension | |
|---|---|---|
| Distance | 1 mile, paved loop | ~3 miles round trip |
| Surface | Fully paved, two bridges | Paved for first half mile, then packed trail |
| Access | Free, no pass required | Free from the boat launch trailhead |
| What you see | River, playfield, boat launch | Chelan Dam overlook, basalt gorge, penstock signage |
| Typical crowd | Dog walkers, joggers, families | Sparse most of the year |
The gorge itself is the payoff most people skip. Where the river narrows below the dam, ice-age glaciers carved a short run of basalt cliffs that the trail overlooks directly, a stretch of whitewater that's dramatic precisely because it's compressed into such a tight channel.
Keep walking past the gorge overlook and Reach 1 feeds into Beebe Springs, a 200 acre former orchard that Washington Fish and Wildlife has spent two decades converting back into river shoreline habitat. This isn't incidental land. The parcels were bought between 2003 and 2013 specifically to secure water rights for the Chelan Fish Hatchery next door and to preserve roughly a mile of Columbia River shoreline, wetland, and shrub-steppe.
The trail network there has some genuinely local names attached to it. West of Highway 97 you'll find the Cultus Jim and Chelan Bob trails. East of the highway, a set of crushed rock paths with gentle grades are built to full ADA standard, and along them are life-size steel sculptures of Indigenous people by Virgil "Smoker" Marchand, a Colville Confederated Tribes member. There's also Frank's Pond, a small fishing hole set aside for anglers under 15. If you've kept walking south along the LaChappelle Trail, it gets overgrown as it nears Beebe Bridge, which is the practical spot to turn around rather than push through brush.
A few things worth knowing before you drive out there instead of walking from downtown:
There's a reason late September is a better week to make this walk than most of the calendar. Beebe Creek, which threads through the wetland unit before reaching the Columbia, hosts spawning chinook and coho salmon in October and November. Steelhead run through the same creek in April and May, but that's still half a year off. The fall run is the one that's about to start.
None of this requires timing your walk around a fish count. It just means the wetland stretch is more alive right now than it will be again until spring, with eagles and other birds drawn to the same run.
The trailhead at the downtown boat launch doesn't close. Riverwalk Park and the first stretch of Reach 1 are open year round, dam overlook included. What closes is vehicle access to the Beebe Springs Wildlife Area itself, which Washington Fish and Wildlife shuts to all vehicles from December 1 through March 15 each year.
Practically, that means the parking lots off Highway 97 and Highway 150 go dark for the winter, and the easiest way to reach the far end of the trail system becomes the walk-in route from downtown, on foot, the whole way. It's still doable. It's just longer, colder, and less convenient than it is right now, in the stretch between now and December 1 when you can drive straight to either Beebe Springs lot and start from the far end if you'd rather do the wetland loops first and save the dam overlook for the walk back.
Downtown itself has a little more going on this year than it usually does by this point in the season. The Historic Downtown Chelan Association has an alley activation project in the works for 2026, adding benches, shade, and art to the alley between the Landing and Campbell's, part of a longer effort to connect downtown's businesses to the same waterfront that Reach 1 runs along. It's a small addition, but it means the walk from a parked car to the boat launch trailhead is getting a little more worth lingering over on the way out.
The loop everyone already knows isn't wrong. It's just the short version. The long one starts at the same boat launch, runs past a dam most residents have never actually looked at up close, and ends in a wetland that won't be this easy to reach again until spring.
If you're the kind of Hawk's Meadow neighbor who wants more of these details before they show up anywhere else, on trails, on wineries, on whatever's changing around the lake this season, Jessie Simmons tracks them as they happen, not just when someone's ready to buy or sell.
Stay up to date on the latest real estate trends.
Real Estate
