If you live on the hillside along Jericho Road, you already know the drill. You park at Trailhead Park, you climb the stairs on the Canyon Trail, you get your view, you go home. Ask most people up here which side of Badger Mountain they use and they will describe the same 130-some steps without hesitation, because it is the trail they have walked more times than they can count.
What almost nobody on this hill has done in the same stretch of months is drive around to the other side of the mountain. Not because that trail is harder to find. Because for five months out of the year, the reason people stay on the near side has less to do with habit than with something crawling in the brush on the far one.
The Trail Everyone On The Hill Already Knows
Trailhead Park sits at 525 Queensgate Drive, close enough to the Jericho Road hillside that it functions as the default front door to Badger Mountain for anyone living up here. From the parking lot, the Canyon Trail climbs through a small draw, hits a set of stairs cut into the slope, and keeps going until you are standing on a ridge with the Tri-Cities laid out below you. According to Friends of Badger Mountain, the nonprofit that built and still maintains the trail system, the Canyon Trail is also the most heavily used route on the mountain, drawing roughly 100,000 visits a year. It earns that traffic honestly. It is the shortest way to a summit view, and at an average grade of 15 percent, it is also the steepest trail on the mountain, the only one where bikes and horses are not allowed.
That combination, close, short, steep, popular, is exactly why it becomes the only trail most Jericho Heights residents ever learn. When a trail this convenient sits this close to home, there is little incentive to look for a second option.
Why The Quiet Side Stays Quiet All Summer
Badger Mountain has a second entrance most Jericho Heights residents have never used. The Westgate Trailhead sits off Dallas Road on the northwest side of the mountain, and it feeds a different set of trails entirely, including the Langdon Trail, which wraps the mountain's south slope above a working apple orchard instead of climbing straight up a canyon.
The reason this side gets so little traffic from the Jericho Road hillside is not distance. It is timing. Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife biologist Jason Fidorra has explained that rattlesnakes are most active when the temperature sits in the 70s and 80s, which describes most of a Tri-Cities spring and summer almost exactly. Local hikers have logged sightings across multiple trails on the mountain during those months, and the brushier, more open terrain on the Langdon and Skyline side has historically produced more of those encounters than the paved, high-traffic Canyon Trail. When a trail feels riskier all summer, people stop considering it, even after the season that made it feel that way has passed.
Here is what that split actually looks like on the ground:
| Trailhead Park side | Westgate Trailhead side | |
|---|---|---|
| Access point | 525 Queensgate Dr | Off Dallas Road, near Bombing Range Rd |
| Main trail | Canyon Trail | Langdon Trail |
| Terrain | Steep, 130+ stairs, 15% grade | Gentler slope, wraps below orchard |
| Typical crowd | Highest on the mountain | Lower traffic historically |
| Trail-side feature | Lake Lewis flood marker near summit | Working apple orchard, coyote sign |
What Actually Changes By October
Rattlesnakes are cold-blooded, which means their activity tracks the thermometer closely. As daytime temperatures on the hillside drop out of that 70s-to-80s window that Fidorra described as peak activity, the behavior that kept people on the near side of the mountain all summer starts to fade with it. That does not mean assuming any trail is snake-free. It means the calculation that quietly steered foot traffic toward the paved, high-visibility Canyon Trail all season stops applying the same way once the mornings turn crisp.
That same cooldown works in favor of the harder trail too. A 15 percent grade and a set of stairs feel very different at 58 degrees than they do in July. If the steep side of the mountain has felt like a summer-only outing, October is when it stops requiring an early alarm to beat the heat.
The Orchard Side Nobody From The Hillside Has Walked
The Langdon Trail does not summit. It curves around the south side of Badger Mountain instead, tracing the natural contours above a working apple orchard that runs the length of that slope. Guides that cover the mountain regularly mention coyote sign along this stretch, evidence of the wider range of wildlife that uses the quieter side of Badger Mountain compared to the high-traffic Canyon route. It is a different kind of walk than the one most people from Jericho Heights already know: flatter, slower, oriented around the orchard and the folds of the hillside rather than a single climb to a view.
Reaching it means driving around to Dallas Road instead of walking or driving the short hop to Queensgate, which is the entire reason it stays unfamiliar to people who live five minutes from the other entrance. The extra ten minutes in the car is the only real cost. The payoff is a side of the same mountain that looks nothing like the one visible from most front windows on the hill.
The Marker Most People Walk Past
Even the trail everyone already knows has a detail most people miss. Partway up the ridge on the Canyon Trail sits a marker noting the high-water line of Lake Lewis, the temporary lake that covered this entire basin roughly 11,000 years ago when an ice dam broke far to the east and sent a wall of water tearing through the region. Badger Mountain stood above that water as an island. The ridge you are standing on to catch your breath after the stairs was, for a short and violent stretch of geologic time, shoreline.
It is easy to walk past a small sign on a familiar trail without reading it. Worth a look next time, if only because it explains why this particular hill rises the way it does above everything around it.
Why This Matters More Than It Seems
None of this changes what Badger Mountain is. It is still the same 574-acre preserve, still managed by the same nonprofit that carved the first trail into it by hand back in 2005. What changes is which part of it a Jericho Heights resident actually uses, and that choice has quietly been shaped by a seasonal pattern most people never connected to their own hiking habits. Fall does not just cool things down. It resets which side of the mountain feels approachable, which is as good a reason as any to try the door you have been driving past for years.
If you already call this hillside home, you know the view from the top of those stairs better than most. The orchard side is waiting for the same kind of familiarity, whenever the mood strikes on a cool October morning.
For more on what makes this corner of south Richland worth paying attention to, Laura & Wes Hodges keep a close eye on the neighborhoods around Jericho Heights. If you would like local updates and new listings delivered straight to your inbox, reach out any time.
