Roosevelt elk, found only in the Pacific Northwest, graze contentedly along a path that human-carrying trams use to explore the attraction’s interior. Image by Tom Adkinson

EATONVILLE, Wash. –In just a few hours, the Northwest Trek Wildlife Park in the forested foothills of the Cascade Mountains outside Tacoma can deliver the CliffNotes version of a multi-day expedition into the Pacific Northwest wilderness.

If you’re too young to know CliffNotes, they are study guides to works of literature, launched in 1958 with summaries and explanations of 16 Shakespeare plays.

The route for the walking-tour area at Northwest Trek is shaded by towering Douglas firs, and it is a true forest experience. Image by Tom Adkinson

In decades gone by, when high school English teachers spied a distinctive yellow and black CliffsNotes booklet in a student’s possession, the outcome often wasn’t good. The student likely hadn’t read the assigned book and was depending on the summary to skate by.

However, unlike with a high schooler who takes a shortcut to learning, no shame or punishment befalls a visitor to the Northwest Trek. Few people in their entire lives will have wilderness encounters with this many bears, bison, elk, eagles, wolves, foxes and owls – much less with bobcats, cougars and Canada lynx.

Northwest Trek trams provide a steady platform for a mom to teach her son how to compose a nature photo. Image by Tom Adkinson

The animals live in expansive natural habitats. Predators, of course, are isolated. However, grazers such as bison, mountain goats, moose, black-tailed deer, bighorn sheep, caribou and Roosevelt elk have 435 acres of forest, meadows, hills and tranquil Horseshoe Lake and the lake’s wetlands in which to roam.

The lake is an integral part of the original land donation that became today’s 725-acre Northwest Trek. Dr. David and Connie Hellyer donated the land where they lived to their community, leading to the opening of Northwest Trek in 1975. It is part of Parks Tacoma, an independent government agency.

A serious photographer with a long telephoto lens lines up a tight shot at the award-winning Eagle Passage exhibition area. Image by Tom Adkinson

Northwest Trek offers two basic ways to get up close (and almost personal) with its animals. One is a self-guided walking tour among towering Douglas firs and other trees on paths that lead from one habitat to the next. Stay as long as you like at each viewing area – waiting for just the right angle for a photograph or studying the terrain to see how well a cougar, a red fox or a barn owl blends in with the environment.

The other is aboard a multi-coach tram that glides almost silently through the free-range territory. The Roosevelt elk (named for President Theodore Roosevelt and found only in the Pacific Northwest), bison, black-tailed deer and other grazers pay the trams no mind. That allows the tram drivers to pause, talk about each species and give you opportunities for photos that National Geographic photographers might wait months in the field to acquire.

Personal tours into Northwest Trek with only a limited number of passengers are available for an extra fee. Image by Tom Adkinson

A bear enclosure and a special area for bald eagles are two highlights of the walking-tour area.

As the zoo’s website notes, “There’s nothing quite like standing on a forest trail and suddenly realizing a bear is 20 feet away and watching you . . . Thrills, yes. Danger, no.” The two resident grizzly bears arrived from the wild as orphans – Hawthorne from Alaska and Huckleberry from Montana.

This life-size illustration of an adult cougar dwarfs the young visitor who could view a live cougar just feet away. Image by Tom Adkinson

Just as Hawthorne and Huckleberry would not have survived in nature, the injured and rescued occupants of Eagle Passage are in the same situation. Their forever home is an expanse of old-growth forest carefully curated to be a habitat that makes sense to them and shows human visitors a natural environment.

“My goal was to make Eagle Passage look and feel like where you would find bald eagles in the wild – up at Mount Rainier or on the Olympic Peninsula,” said Northwest Trek horticulturalist Jake Pool when Eagle Passage won top exhibit honors from the Association of Zoos and Aquariums in 2021.

Bison, which once numbered in the millions in North America, are a popular attraction on the tram route at Northwest Trek. Photo by J.R. Braugh

Yet another way to experience Northwest Trek is to stay overnight in one of three accommodations (an A-frame, a cabin or a cottage). They sit uphill from Horseshoe Lake amid a stand of Douglas firs. The bugling of a Roosevelt elk may be your wilderness wakeup alarm.

Trip-planning resources: NWtrek.org and VisitPierceCounty.com

(Travel writer Tom Adkinson’s book, 100 Things To Do in Nashville Before You Die, is available at Amazon.com.