Hiking in the Hood: Head Out The Door For A Rigorous In-City Amble

Seattle Magazine, February 2007
By Roddy Scheer

Even during our rainy season, it’s easy to enjoy the outdoors—and you don’t have to go far to do it. With a few hours to spare, an urban hike is the ticket to re-energizing the body and re-invigorating the spirit.

That’s just what Val Burgess thought when she turned an informal exercise group into Tenderfoot Adventures, a guide service that offers weekly outdoor outings, some in town and others further afield. I joined Burgess and her group on a four-plus mile urban tromp through some of Seattle’s most scenic parks and community gardens. While Burgess’ service is geared to retirees, the hike, which had me huffing and puffing, is a good workout for all ages. It starts on high atop Beacon Hill and then meanders east and downhill to the shores of Lake Washington, losing about 50 feet in elevation over a mile or so. The real work starts on the way back, of course, when a good chunk of that 50 feet elevation is regained on a set of 75 stairs leading back up to the starting point.

We began early on a Tuesday morning at Jose Rizal Park in Beacon Hill. The view from the park showcases some of Seattle’s best features: the loading cranes, stadiums and skyscrapers hugging the Puget Sound shoreline with West Seattle and the Olympic Mountains in the distance.

Leaving the sweeping city views behind, we set forth, crossing over Golf Drive South at the foot of Amazon’s art deco headquarters. Heading east, our footpath took us into nearby Sturgus Park where we were greeted by a sign delineating the beginning of the fabled Mountains to Sound Greenway, a 100-mile protected greenbelt stretching from where we stood to the desert grasslands of Eastern Washington. Sturgus Park is a narrow and grassy enclave traversing alongside and above Interstate 90 (I-90). But despite this location, it’s a surprisingly pleasant place to stroll, perhaps in large part due to the intriguing environmental art on display here. “Equality,” a sculptural installation by artists Ken Leback and Rolon Bert Garner, consists of a 30-foot grid of miniature granite houses facing a grassy mound topped by a single bronze house and serves as a focal point for the park.

We continued east to Sam Smith Park on the lid of I-90, where we were treated to more public art in the form of bronze sculptor Gerard Tsutakawa’s 10- and-a-half-foot tall “Urban Peace Circle Memorial,” created and installed in 1994 to commemorate young victims of gun violence in Seattle. From the park’s edge are views of Lake Washington—turbulent on this day—and the gleaming Bellevue skyline. We continued south down Lake Washington Boulevard and ducked into Colman Park’s forest primeval. An overflowing “p-patch” community garden there delighted us with a dazzling array of sights, colors and smells and a striking diversity of planting styles.

A few blocks up and over we make our last stop at Bradner Gardens Park, a 1.6-acre testament to community togetherness and organic gardening ideals. When neighborhood residents caught wind of a city plan during the mid-1990s to sell off the park’s land to developers, they banded together and raised funds to keep the site in public hands. In the intervening years, many of the same volunteers who fought to keep Bradner Gardens a park are now working to maintain it as one of the city’s premiere community garden “p-patch” sites. The park’s abundant plantings are 100 percent organic and salmon-friendly, and several area horticultural groups maintain demonstration gardens here. Public art also abounds at Bradner Gardens: a 75-foot garden-theme tile mosaic, a carved bench decorated with the salmon lifecycle, and wire trellis adorned with rusted-out gardening implements.

Leaving Bradner Gardens, we loop back up via the Mountains to Sound path to our starting point at Rizal Park. Within two hours we have traversed more than four miles and racked up enough cardiovascular credit to last a couple of days—proof that whatever the season, there’s no reason to be sedentary in Seattle.

COORDINATES

Getting there:
This hike’s starting point, Dr. Jose Rizal Park, is just off 12th Avenue S in Seattle’s Beacon Hill neighborhood. Ample free parking is available in the lot behind the Dr. Jose Rizal Park sign. Bus riders can catch Metro Transit’s 36 bus at Third Avenue and Pine Street downtown.

SIDEBARS

What To Wear/Bring:
Even on an urban hike, the basic rules of preparing for bad weather apply—especially during a typical Seattle winter. Wear or bring a good rain jacket and a warm layer of wool or fleece (cotton does not insulate well when wet), as well as gloves and a hat. Hiking boots aren’t required; a good pair of tennis or running shoes will do (though waterproof or resistant materials are preferred). The new breed of trail running shoes designed to tackle wet and muddy conditions is the best bet. And don’t forget a daypack with lunch and a bottle of water.

Urban Hiking For Art’s Sake:
For another urban hike with an art focus, head to Seattle Art Museum’s new mammoth Olympic Sculpture Park along the Belltown waterfront. The 9-acre park, which opened in January, gives art gawkers and urban hikers alike the opportunity to enjoy a variety of outdoor sculpture for free, against a backdrop of the Olympic Mountains, Puget Sound and Seattle’s skyline. Well-known artists whose work is on display here include Alexander Calder, Louise Bourgeois, Roy McMakin, Richard Serra, Beverly Pepper, Mark Dion, Teresita Fernandez and Tony Smith. For more of a workout, cross over Elliott Avenue and head north into Myrtle Edwards Park and then Elliott Bay Park.

Sounding Out The Greenway:
The Mountains to Sound Greenway, a protected greenbelt which starts at Seattle’s Sturgus Park and stretches east for 100 miles across the Cascade mountains paralleling I-90, is the realization of a dream first articulated by activists from the Issaquah Alps Trails Club when they staged a march for conservation’s sake from Snoqualmie Pass to the Seattle waterfront back in 1990. Since then, scores of concerned individuals, companies and institutions have contributed money, ideas and land to the cause. These days the majority of the greenway consists of public land and includes more than 700,000 acres held by local, state and federal agencies in trust for the public good. The urban western end of the Greenway provides merely a taste of the natural splendor hikers can find along its trails and byways on the east side of Lake Washington and beyond.

Coordinates

Tenderfoot Adventures: tenderfootadventures.com

Mountains to Sound Greenway: mtsgreenway.org

Seattle Parks and Recreation: 206.684.4075; seattle.gov/parks

Dr. Jose Rizal Park, 1008 12th Ave. S; seattle.gov/parks/parkspaces/joserizal.htm

Sturgus Park, 904 Sturgus Ave. S; seattle.gov/parks/parkspaces/sturguspark.htm

Sam Smith Park, 1400 Martin Luther King Jr. Way S; seattle.gov/parks/parkspaces/SamSmithPark.htm

Colman Park, 800 Lake Washington Blvd. S; seattle/gov/parks/parkspaces/colmanpark.htm

Bradner Gardens Park, 29th Avenue S and S Grand Street; seattle.gov/parks/parkspaces/bradnergardens.htm

Seattle Department of Neighborhoods P-Patch (Community Gardens) Program, cityofseattle.net/neighborhoods/ppatch

Olympic Sculpture Park, between Elliott and Western avenues, and Broad and Eagle streets, seattle.gov/parks/parksapces/OlympicSculpturePark.htm