Ever hiked to the top of Little Badger Mountain and wondered why the trail just stops there?
If you've done the climb off Morency Drive since it opened in March 2024, you know the feeling. You pass the largest Ice Age Floods erratic on the local ridgeline, gain the summit in under a mile, take in the highest view inside Richland's city limits, and then turn around and walk back the way you came. No loop. No connection to the bigger trail system a half mile to the south. It's a trail to nowhere, which is a strange thing to say about the highest point in your own city.
That's about to change, and the work is happening on the hillside right now.
Two Crews Are Already On The Ground
Friends of Badger Mountain, the volunteer group that has spent two decades buying and building trail land around Richland, has spent the past year lining up the specific pieces needed to finish Little Badger and stitch it into the larger Badger Mountain Centennial Preserve. This isn't a wish list. It's contracted work with dates attached.
- Alta Engineering was hired in fall 2025 to design the trail across the steep north face of the Little Badger ridge, the technical section standing between the current dead-end summit trail and the rest of the preserve.
- Ellison Earthworks, LLC is under contract to build a pedestrian mid-block crossing over Queensgate Drive this year, the piece that lets hikers cross the road safely rather than dodging traffic.
- APEX Engineering finished the 30 percent design for a new trailhead parking lot, with public comment wrapped up on November 6, 2025.
Put those three together and you get the actual plan: a crossing over Queensgate, a routed path up the technical north face, and a real parking lot at the base. That's what turns "the trail that dead-ends at a summit" into a link in something longer.
"The shortest and easiest climb and the best views."
That's how Marc Spinner, who was president of Friends of Badger Mountain when the group pitched local businesses to help fund the Little Badger purchase, described what this new stretch would offer once finished. He wasn't talking about scenery for its own sake. He was talking about access, the kind that makes a trail get used instead of just admired from the road.
The Longer Map Nobody Draws For You
Most people who hike Badger Mountain think of it as one destination. It isn't. It's one piece of a corridor Friends of Badger Mountain has been assembling parcel by parcel since 2005, with a stated goal of connecting Amon Basin at the Richland-Kennewick border all the way to the Yakima River near Benton City, by way of Little Badger, Badger, Candy, and Red mountains. Four peaks, one continuous ridge, and Little Badger is the missing tooth in that row.
Here's what's already built and rideable or walkable today, so you can see where the new link actually lands:
| Trail | Length | Elevation Gain | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Badger Mountain Trail (Canyon Trail) | 3.3 mi | 800 ft | Shorter of the two main trailheads, starts at Trailhead Park on Queensgate Drive |
| Badger Skyline Trail | 6.8 mi | 1,095 ft | Longest and steepest option in the preserve, ridgeline views the whole way |
| Badger Mountain CSS Loop | 4.4 mi | 895 ft | Popular after-work loop, fully exposed with no shade |
| Candy Mountain | 3.5 mi round trip | 551 ft | Separate preserve off Dallas Road, less crowded than Badger |
| Little Badger summit trail | Under 1 mi one-way | Not yet full network | Currently a dead end, opened March 2024, being connected this year |
Once the north-face section and the Queensgate crossing are in, Little Badger stops being an isolated spur and becomes the northern anchor of that whole system. You'd be able to start near your own neighborhood and eventually work your way toward Candy Mountain without getting in a car.
You're Probably Not The Majority Up There
Here's the part that surprises most Richland residents. City of Richland park rangers interviewed nearly 300 hikers at the Badger Mountain trailhead and found that only about 26 percent of them lived in Richland. Another 32 percent came from Pasco, 19 percent from Kennewick, and 19 percent from outside Benton and Franklin counties entirely.
So the mountain in your backyard is, statistically, more likely to be someone else's backyard mountain. That's not a knock on the trail. It's a sign of how far its reputation travels, and it's part of why the Little Badger connection matters beyond the people who live closest to it. A trail that draws a quarter of its traffic from outside the county isn't a neighborhood amenity anymore. It's regional infrastructure, and Richland happens to own the summit.
Why The Preserve Keeps Growing
The demand isn't new, and the numbers back it up. Badger Mountain Centennial Preserve opened in 2008 and drew 44,000 visitors in its first year. By 2019, combined annual visits across Badger and the newer Candy Mountain preserve were estimated at 310,000. Summitpost.org has reported that Badger Mountain records up to 2,500 people at its summit in a single week, enough to rank it among the most summited peaks in the state.
That kind of growth is exactly why Friends of Badger Mountain keeps annexing new ground instead of resting on what it already has. Since 2005 the group has procured roughly 900 acres and developed 19 miles of trail, with lead support from CH2M, Bechtel, and Recreational Equipment Inc. Candy Mountain, the newest full preserve, opened in 2017 after a 2016 land acquisition. Little Badger is simply the next parcel in that same pattern, and this year is when the physical work catches up to the plan.
What This Actually Means For Your Next Hike
If you live on the south side of town, getting to any of this got easier last year for a reason that has nothing to do with trails. The Queensgate Drive extension between Keene Drive and Shockley Road opened on May 7, 2025, bridging Interstate 182 and connecting Richland's main shopping district directly to the neighborhoods on the south flank of Badger Mountain. That road is also the one Ellison Earthworks will be crossing with the new pedestrian crossing this year, which means the same infrastructure push that made driving to the trailhead faster is the same one making the trailhead itself bigger.
For now, the Morency Drive summit trail on Little Badger is open and worth the short climb on its own, especially early in the morning before the exposed upper sections heat up. The Canyon Trail and CSS Loop on Badger Mountain remain the easiest starting points if you want mileage today rather than construction to watch. Candy Mountain, reached off Dallas Road, stays the quieter option if the main Badger trailhead parking lot is full, which on a Saturday morning it often is.
What changes by the end of this construction season is what's possible from your own front door. A dead-end summit trail becomes a connector. A single peak becomes a chain of four. And a hillside that already pulls a quarter of a million visitors a year gets the one piece of infrastructure that's been missing since Little Badger's trail first opened.
That's worth knowing whether you're planning this weekend's hike or just trying to understand what's actually changing on the hill you look at every day.
If you're thinking about where you'd want to live relative to trails like these, or you're weighing a move within Richland and want someone who actually tracks what's happening on the ground here, Desert Edge Realty Group is a call or message away. Contact Us.
