Northwest Trek hours, ticket prices and how the tram works

Northwest Trek Wildlife Park, off State Route 161 north of Eatonville and about 31 miles by road from Enumclaw, is open 9:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. Thursday through Monday until December 23, 2026 (plus Wednesday, November 11, for Veterans Day), closed other Tuesdays and Wednesdays, Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, then daily from December 26 to 31. As of October 2026 an adult ticket costs $25 online or $32 at the gate, youth 3 to 12 pay $17 or $22, children 2 and under get in free, and parking is free. The tram tour, about 40 minutes among the park's bison, elk, moose and mountain goats, comes with admission.

Three-fifths of the park, 435 of its 725 acres, is the Free-Roaming Area those herds live in, and the park shows it to visitors from its trams and on paid tours. From October 15, 2026 through January 24, 2027 it has one more resident: Valle, one of eight troll sculptures by the Danish artist Thomas Dambo set around the park, each 7 to 9 feet tall and built mostly from recycled wood. The park's troll page says Valle can be seen from the tram. Its Keeper Adventure Tour page, which sells seats in a keeper's Jeep at $120 a person for non-members, calls that tour "your best chance to see this troll."

What are Northwest Trek's winter hours?

From October 5 to December 23, 2026 the park keeps short days, 9:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. Thursday through Monday, plus Wednesday, November 11, for Veterans Day; it closes for Thanksgiving, November 26. December 23 is a Wednesday, so the last open day before Christmas is Monday, December 21. It opens daily from December 26 to 31, and Winter Wildland, with holiday treats for the animals, runs December 26 and 27, free with admission.

The park's hours page listed 2026 only when this was written in mid-October 2026, with nothing for 2027. In 2026 the park opened only Fridays through Sundays, plus three holidays, from January 1 to March 29, then daily, closing at 4 or 5 p.m., until early October. That made seven schedules in one year.

How much are Northwest Trek tickets?

As of October 2026, the park's prices page charges adults 13 to 64 $25 online and $32 at the front gate, seniors 65 and over $23 and $30, and youth 3 to 12 $17 and $22; children 2 and under and members get in free. Online tickets, encouraged but not required, are good for one visit within a year of purchase and are not refundable, and they save $7 an adult or senior and $5 a child.

U.S. military members and veterans with proof of service, and Pierce County residents, pay the online price at the gate. From November 11 to 15, 2026, the park's Veterans' Appreciation Days, veterans and active-duty members with proof of service get in free at the admission window, and immediate family members get half off general admission. Enumclaw is in King County; Buckley, across the White River, is in Pierce. Washington residents on income assistance or in foster or kinship care can buy $8 Wild Access tickets at the gate.

How long is the Northwest Trek tram tour?

About 40 minutes through the Free-Roaming Area, by the park's tram questions page. Rides are first come, first served and "spots may be limited," the prices page says; at the Tour Station, staff scan your tram ticket at your boarding time and assign seats. The trams go up to 10 mph and slow to about 1 mph beside animals. They are heated and their windows open, but there is no restroom and no food on board, only water in a closed container. Strollers, car seats, wagons and coolers stay behind; wheelchairs up to 25 inches wide fit.

The electric trams replaced propane ones, and their Tour Station won the Association of Zoos and Aquariums' 2025 Significant Achievement Facility Award.

The herds include Roosevelt elk, the native elk of the coast and the Cascades. The elk around Enumclaw descend in whole or in part from Rocky Mountain elk shipped from Yellowstone in 1912, as this site's field guide to Enumclaw's elk herd tells it, and the Yakima herd fed each winter at Oak Creek began with Rocky Mountain elk from Montana in 1913.

As of October 2026, two paid tours cover the same ground, both with admission included: a Wild Drive, your own vehicle with up to eight people in a guided caravan, reserved online, at $120 a vehicle or $65 for members; and a 90-minute Keeper Adventure Tour off the tour roads in a keeper's Jeep, ages 5 and up, at $120 a person or $65 for members. On foot, paved paths pass the bears, wolves, cats and Eagle Passage, opened in 2019 for the park's rescued bald eagles; for wild ones, see this site's guide to the Skagit River's wintering bald eagles.

Where are the trolls at Northwest Trek?

Eight of the twelve sculptures in "TROLLS: A Field Study," a temporary exhibit, stand at the Trek from October 15, 2026 through January 24, 2027; the other four are at Point Defiance Zoo & Aquarium in Tacoma, and each park's admission covers its own. The Trek has the troll leader, Taks, with Anja, Wilde, Bignut, Lilnut, Hasse, Kirse and Valle. The map on the park's troll page puts Anja near the entrance, Wilde by the Tram Tour Station, Bignut on the unpaved nature trail, with its exposed roots and uneven ground, and Valle in the Free-Roaming Area, and Point Defiance's own troll page puts Taks on the cat pathway, Hasse near the gray wolf pathway, Lilnut on the upper bear pathway and Kirse on the lower bear pathway; all but Bignut and Valle can be seen from paved, ADA-accessible paths. Hugs and photos are welcome; climbing is not.

Five of them, Wilde, Anja, Lilnut, Hasse and Taks, can be seen after dark at Hoot 'n' Howl, the park's annual Halloween nights, 5 to 9 p.m. on October 16, 17, 23, 24 and 30, 2026, on tickets of $18 online, $16 for members online and $25 at the window.

They are not the region's first Dambo trolls: his Northwest Trolls project, presented by the Scan Design Foundation with the National Nordic Museum among its site partners, revealed six in 2023, five in the Seattle area and one in Portland, Oregon.

Can you see all 12 trolls in one day from Enumclaw?

Yes, on a Thursday through Monday, starting early. Until December 20, 2026, Point Defiance opens those days from 9 a.m. to 3:30 p.m., by the zoo's hours page, and the Trek closes at 3. The zoo is about 34 miles from the Trek and 35 from Enumclaw by a routing engine, a loop of about 100 miles. Pay full-price daytime admission at either park and ask at its front gate for a Trolls coupon: $10 off each of up to five daytime front-gate tickets at the other, not good online, with other discounts or for Hoot 'n' Howl. The zoo's daytime prices matched the Trek's in October 2026, so the coupon made its adult gate ticket $22, $3 under buying online. Its trolls, Boge, Larke, Poppy and Birch, are all on paved paths.

Can you bring a dog to Northwest Trek?

Only on Dog Days, with a $20 dog ticket bought online in advance, members included, plus admission or membership for the people. The 2026 dates from October 15 on are October 22 and 30 (daytime only on the 30th), November 1, 12, 20 and 30, and December 3, 11, 19 and 30. Handlers must be 18 or older, one dog each, on a non-retractable leash of six feet or less. Dogs may not ride the trams or the Jeep tours, though a Dog Days Wild Drive ticket covers up to eight people and one dog in the Free-Roaming Area, and each extra dog, one per adult, costs another $20. On other days the park's code of conduct bars pets; service animals are welcome.

How do you get to Northwest Trek from Enumclaw?

It is about 31 miles from City Hall, a little under an hour by a routing engine's estimate. Take State Route 410 to Buckley, State Route 165 south for a mile and a half, and State Route 162 through South Prairie; before downtown Orting, turn left onto Orville Road East, which becomes the Kapowsin Highway, then turn left onto State Route 161 and left again on Trek Drive East; the address is 11610 Trek Drive East, Eatonville. South Prairie and Orting are both trailhead towns in this site's Foothills Trail guide. The park also sits on the winter road to Mount Rainier: the route to the Nisqually Entrance in this site's guide to Mount Rainier in winter passes the Trek Drive turnoff.

How did Northwest Trek start?

It began as land that Dr. David "Doc" Hellyer and his wife, Connie, bought in pieces and gave away. In 1937 they bought 100 acres from the St. Paul and Tacoma Lumber Company, added 437 more four years later and built a 12-by-14-foot cabin beside Horseshoe Lake, which the Tour Station overlooks. On August 23, 1971 they gave it to the Metropolitan Park District of Tacoma, now Parks Tacoma, which runs both parks. Doc Hellyer called it, in words the park's timeline quotes, a place where "people, especially children, might experience animals in the dignity and beauty of a nearly wild state within a natural setting." A $2.5 million voter-approved bond paid to develop it, and on July 17, 1975 Dan Evans, then the governor, opened it by cutting through a stack of logs with a chainsaw instead of a ribbon.

The Association of Zoos and Aquariums first accredited the park in 1985, by the park's timeline, and the association's list in September 2026 showed it accredited through September 2027. The timeline also records, deadpan, "several sightings of wild, mountain-fresh Rainier Beers in the Free-Roaming Area" in the early 1980s. The Wild Rainiers of the brewery's 1974 to 1988 TV ads were people in eight-foot fiberglass bottles forever dodging capture, as HistoryLink describes them; the park does not say what they were doing in its meadows.

Before you go

Check the hours page the morning you leave, or call 360-832-6117. Head to the Tour Station early, use the restroom first and park the stroller at the station. For a January troll visit, wait for the 2027 hours; the exhibit ends Sunday, January 24, 2027.