Lord Hill Regional Park — Saturday, May. 17, 2014

Puget Sound and Islands > Seattle-Tacoma Area

Today we hiked the Beaver Pond Trail to the Pipeline Trail, then followed the Pipeline Trail to the Temple Pond Loop. After stopping for a break on the east side of Temple Pond, we continued along the loop trail out to the Pipeline Trail and made our way along the Pipeline Trail to the spur trail to Temple Pond. That's when things got interesting. Along the spur trail to Temple Pond, we discovered a new trail that forks off to the right. The only signage on the trail indicates that bikers are not allowed. We followed this trail as it wound through the woods along the west and south sides of Temple Pond. We noticed a spur trail through some ferns to the south shore of Temple Pond and this made for a nice lunch spot. After our break, we continued along the new trail to another fork in the trail. We initially took the left fork and discovered a dead end. We returned to the fork and followed it to right and continued along the trail for maybe 1 or 1.5 miles and it eventually returned us to the Pipeline Trail, west of the junction with the Main and River Trails. The new trail appears to be very recently constructed as much of it was thick, loose dirt with a lot of roots in it. This trail is not on any maps that I have seen on Lord Hill. After our unplanned adventure, we returned to the parking lot via the Pipeline and Main Trails, stopping only to take in the viewpoint along the spur trail from the Pipeline Trail. I'm not sure about total mileage due to the new trail and doubling back along the Pipeline Trails but I'm going to ballpark it at about 7 miles total.