From the description, it sounds like a great place for an extended backpacking adventure. The route, according to the official literature...
By Dan A. Nelson | May 8, 2008
Congratulations -- you made it through another long, dark winter, and now you're itching to get outside and stretch your legs. We've found five great local races -- each one progressively longer and later in the season -- to fit your need for speed, whether you're a seasoned marathoner or just breaking in your first pair of running shoes.
By Anna Roth | April 16, 2008
For all the fuss, the East Lake Sammamish Trail is fairly anticlimactic.
It's a pleasant enough lane weaving along the shore of Lake Sammamish atop an old railroad bed, mostly between and past a curious blend of old lakeside cottages and more recently sprouted edifices of opulence. But for eight years after King County purchased the corridor, this trail was derailed by a train of contention stemming from residents' concerns. So somehow when you finally travel it, you expect it to be more than it is.
By Greg Johnston | April 27, 2006
Sweat is trickling down your brow now, your thighs and calves are warm and working as they're intended, your mind wandering with your eye; a green and white ferry leaves Coleman Dock, a red and white Coast Guard cutter steams into Elliott Bay, seagulls squawk. A friendly female jogger smiles as she passes coming the other way, you wipe your forehead with your wrist and begin to round Duwamish Head, breathing rhythmically, feeling the sun's glow, smelling salt air. Into full view strides the Olympics, the twin peaks of The Brothers most prominent, their shoulders cloaked in fading snow.
By Greg Johnston | June 23, 2005
An achievement 22 years in the making deserves more hoopla than your standard ribbon-cutting.
So when Snohomish County on Saturday officially opens a 10.3-mile section of the Centennial Trail, celebrants instead will lift a faux railroad-crossing arm, symbolizing the trail's 116-year-old roots as a railroad grade.
"It definitely was worth the wait," said former state Rep. John Wynne, who was among a small group of Lake Stevens visionaries who conceived the rails-to-trails project in December 1982.
By Diane Brooks | March 30, 2005
NORTH BEND -- The Snoqualmie Valley Trail threads a 31-mile ribbon through the green of rural east King County, lacing the forested foothills of the Cascades with the rich, wet bottomlands on the river of the same name. The former railroad route weaves through forests of Douglas fir, red cedar and western hemlock, over crashing streams on high wooden trestles, under the stony prominence of Mount Si, through maple and alder woodlands and bird-rich meadows and wetlands.
The trail is also pretty lonely.
By Greg Johnston | June 10, 2004
VANCOUVER, B.C. -- In 1917, when Vancouver was still a small, gritty industrial city set in the coastal rain forest, an immigrant stone mason from a remote Scottish isle began building a granite-block wall around the fragile perimeter of Stanley Park.
Jimmy Cunningham started work at Brockton Point, where a lighthouse was being built. In 1931, after the city named him master stonemason, he extended the wall to other stretches of the 1,000-acre wilderness and incorporated two seaside freshwater swimming pools.
By Alison Appelbe | April 8, 2004
Take a Walk
Location: Seattle.
Length: Over a mile of trails/paved road.
Level of difficulty: Level-to-steep gravel trail (muddy in spots, especially the upper southern trail). From the trailhead, take the right (northern) trail to follow the stream ravine down to Interlaken Boulevard (a paved pedestrian road within the park). Return via the boulevard, or access the southern trail that enters the woods just up the road from where the northern trail emerges.
By Cathy McDonald | January 1, 2004
Runners stride, divers bubble, bicyclers whiz, little girls look for seashells, couples cuddle and a fat lady sitting on a park bench plays a flute.
'Nother typical spring day at Alki Beach, the most happening spot in Seattle for outdoor recreation.
With more than four miles of paved path, volleyball courts, fire pits, barbecue grills, picnic tables and a fishing pier along the sandy/gravelly shore of Puget Sound and Elliott Bay, this place generates people at play like the pilings at the Seacrest Pier collect barnacles.
By Greg Johnston | April 24, 2003
WHATCOM COUNTY To say that it's easy to get lost mountain-biking on Bellingham's Galbraith Mountain is like saying that Northwest winters are a mite cloudy. Or that Seattleites enjoy a spot of coffee now and again. Or that Microsoft retains a lawyer or two. It's understating the obvious.
And what's obvious is this: So many trails, fire and logging roads crisscross this hump of mixed forest and clearcut that you're never quite sure which direction you're riding.
By Mike McQuaide | January 16, 2003
