Why did man climb Mount Everest? Why did man go to the bottom of the ocean? Why did man land on the Moon? Because they're there. With that in mind, I attempted to traverse the West Duwamish Greenbelt Trails from the south to the north end
Refer to the first photo here. Green sections are lovely, the yellow section is overgrown and a little dicey but navigable, red sections are in bad condition, and the dark red section I will never try hiking again
Westcrest Park is nice up until shortly before you have to cross the former Rainbow Bridge, now a washed-out gray. North of here, footing is challenging and you have to wade through spiderwebs, blackberries, and ferns, doing some routefinding in the process. There is a particularly sketchy homeless encampment at a muddy trail intersection which prevented me from going farther, so I took a boot path up to Kenyon Street and made my way around to the trailhead on Highland Park Way SW. The path south of Highland Park Way is barely visible, and I did not take it back to the homeless encampment
North of the trailhead, southeast of South Seattle College, is well maintained. You can freely move about until you reach some large bigleaf maples and a pond east of South Seattle College, at which point the trail quality drops again. There are more spiderwebs, and the trail is clearly a little derelict, but it's not horrendous. It's like this until you pass SW Hudson St, at which point the trail becomes pretty decent in the Puget Park area
Past Puget Park and the Duwamish Longhouse, the trail is tough to find and is once again overgrown. However, there are no more intersecting paths -- just the one you're on. Continue north from here and you might find an owl I spotted. You make your way downhill to the northeast, where the trail fades out at points, and get spat out on 16th Avenue SW
This was a foolish endeavor but now I know which parts are worth a future visit
Comments