The Ballard Seacoast: Parks Not Parks', part II

Dear Diary,

Golden Gardens Park

is over three hundred feet tall.  It is just under 100 acres in area and about 100 yards in height.

I didn't know that on the evening of June 23 as I tried to thread my way through the crowds to explore the part of the park in which I found myself.  I took a picture pretty soon, as the park slowly revealed the reason for the crowds:

There are, of course, restrooms at the beach, off to the north end, but I never got a very good look at them - crowds again, but also sand, which for some reason disagrees with my cart's wheels.  I think there are two stalls in the men's room, and no dryers; what I'm sure of is lockable doors.  I found a water fountain near these restrooms and one at the south end of the beach, neither running.

Also, the man I'd met at Salmon Bay Natural Area had told me of showers there.  Next to the men's room entrance there are high and low spigots, right out there in the open, so a user is expected to keep on a bathing suit or equivalent clothing, and of course neither soap nor towels are provided.  There's enough sand on the walkways there to make these showers finitely useful for their intended purpose, but both times I visited there was enough water under them to show they'd had some use.

North of the restrooms, the beach gives way to more usual park stuff - a playground, some sports space, then a protected wetland and, furthest north, another beach.  That night, however, my attention was caught by a sign introducing the park:

It says the yellow sand is all home-grown, which certainly isn't true of the Midwestern beaches of my childhood.  It also has a map, which made me just a bit more confident than I should have been.

See, this sign, and this map, don't mention that Golden Gardens Park is 300 feet tall.

So, confident I'd explored enough, I looked for the beginning of a barrier-free trail up to the rest of Seattle.  And I didn't find one, and didn't find one, and ...  There is a pedestrian path to the next level, but I learned the next day that it's paved in poorly mortared bricks.

It was, of course, silly of me to expect such a path.  I mean, sure, there's a barrier-free path for cars.  But a similar path for people afoot, or using other kinds of wheels?  Why, that would amount to a, a sidewalk or something.  How could that possibly work?

(Of course, since then the road, which changes names from Seaview Ave to Golden Gardens Drive just within the park, has been closed to cars by the Stay Healthy program.  This is most obviously inconvenient to those who live on houseboats moored in Shilshole Bay Marina, but it also forces people driving to or from the beach into Seaview.)

Finally I gave up and did as the park's designers obviously intended me to, launching into the road.  Drivers adapted, though perhaps not happily.  It helped that I kept leaving the road to explore, during which exploration the traffic thinned.  It was pretty much night by the time I heaved my way up the last steep hill (I'm afraid that even with cars removed, somewhere close to the top some wheelchair users will probably struggle) and rejoined Seattle.

My priorities by that point were finding places to do Number One, and to sleep.  But the next morning, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, I returned.  I was armed with this guidance from the Washington Trails Association (I intended to follow the routes suggested by Alan Gibbs) and with this map, probably originally parks department work.  I was going to walk every trail and really get to know the park.

But first I was going to wash my dishes.  At the top of the park I found a sort of out of the way place to park my cart, and went down many steps (Gibbs's counts are roundedly correct) to the park's other restroom, which I'll introduce shortly.  When finished, I had an ordinary plastic shopping bag containing my detergent, my hand soap, and some washed deli containers.

At this point I decided to go down yet more stairs and take the photos I just showed you, which means it was 11 A.M.  Having started my visit to the sea level part of the park at the sign this time, I went further north and for the first time saw the "North Beach Entrance".  I was curious what the wall at the end of the beach looked like, and proceeded...

Yes, I'll get to what happened next, but it takes us into other parks, so let me finish up with Golden Gardens first.  The stuff I found there can sort of be organised into four levels.  I've already described the sea level one.  The next one up isn't all that far up, and is mainly for overflow parking, but also has mysteriously abandoned streets and, uphill, the park's headquarters.  I don't think it has any entrances from outside the park.

Next is the level with an off-leash area for dogs' people.  There may be a water fountain in that, but I found none near the restrooms mentioned above.  The men's room has one stall with a lockable door, and, I vaguely remember, no dryer.  There's also picnic areas and parking on this level.  I don't think it has access to the streets either.  Finally, up top there's a bench, the head of a stairway, and a bus stop.  (There's no bus on Seaview.)

I did not end up taking every trail.  I took one trail without stairs, so they do exist, but there are many, many stairs on trails in Golden Gardens Park.  The reassurance on that map can only have been meant for the area the map shows, the main beach.

So to return, there I was, setting out to find the wall of the North Beach.  I didn't.  The beach got stonier, and less and less crowded, and at some unposted point I crossed over into

(?) North Beach sensu stricto

For a long time, it seemed, it was just me, the sand, the stones, and the sea.  I started thinking Edward Abbey (whom I haven't read, but some of whose books I once owned) would be at home here.  I felt that taking photos would breach the sacredness, so sorry, you're going to have to make do with words.

Eventually I reached an entrance.  All I knew then was that the street system was on the other side, and the door was locked.  Cursing the city's uneven closures, I walked on.  Not too much later I must have crossed into

(?) Blue Ridge Beach

because I reached that entrance.  Beyond which lay a park not Parks'.  Also locked.

From there I could see other stairs, so I decided to stay on the railroad embankment that lies between the beach and the rest of Seattle.  I knew it was risky, but figured it was only for a short way.  Unfortunately, the stairs turned out to lead to private residences; I didn't even bother climbing them.

Well, here's the crucial decision:  I didn't turn back.  Not to the exit from the embankment at the Blue Ridge Beach Park entrance, and certainly not to Golden Gardens Park.  I was bound and determined to reach the northern wall of North Beach, and turning back would just delay that.

(?) Tidal mudflats

It turned out there weren't nearly as many accommodating rockfalls below the embankment as I'd hoped for.  Partly this is because I'm quite short and, let's say, not very friendly with heights, but also it seems human convenience is not a high priority for falling rocks.

So I stayed on the embankment, still, mind you, carrying that astonishingly durable plastic bag.  I found it harder and harder to keep my footing (my right shoe will probably never be the same) and forgot all about communing with dead naturalists, as the beach below changed in a mysterious and baleful way:  it gradually became ever more dominated by a shining black surface with brilliant green highlights.  I didn't know what it was, but even though I remained determined to escape the embankment, I began to be grateful I hadn't yet.

Carkeek Park

This is where I finally found a rockfall suited to small climbers.  I know this because, within a few feet of me, were venturesome beachgoers also struggling with what I assume is tidal mud.  (If you want to repeat this hike without risk from railways, wear or at least carry high boots.)

After escaping various beach hazards and climbing the stairs, I did at least Number One in the men's room there, found the water fountain not running, and headed for the exit.  Carkeek Park Drive turned out to be much like Golden Gardens Drive - uphill, twisty, and sidewalk-deficient - but there was much less traffic, and I'm quite sure I took less than a month to reach the street grid again.

From there it was a simple matter to head back to Golden Gardens - though I admit I took a bus partway, worried about my cart, which proved untouched.

Later that day I got some answers.

REDUX:  (Private) North Beach sensu stricto

The streetside entrance to North Beach - the first I'd encountered - is at 28th Ave and Esplanade St.  The sign on the door there also hangs on the fence around a building adjacent to the steps, so I'd assumed the rules that sign outlines of the "North Beach Club" applied to the building.  Nope:  they apply to the door.

The website the sign points to explains everything.  Back around 1930 the purchasers of a bunch of new homes in the area organised to take care of water service.  The developer did it for them, and also handed them the relevant stretch of beach.  They now have two levels of membership.  Residents of the original 90 houses are full members.  Residents of a surrounding area can apply for associate membership.  One element of membership is a key to that door.

My apologies to the city for blaming it.

REDUX:  (Private?) Blue Ridge Beach

Blue Ridge Beach Park, the park I saw through the second locked gate, is a membership park at Neptune Place and Blue Ridge Drive.  I think it's very likely run along lines similar to those of the North Beach Club, but unlike the latter, the Blue Ridge folks seem to say nothing online; if there's a URL in the part of their sign

hidden by later accretions, it doesn't come up in any search I've tried.  Note also a nearby "Blue Ridge Park", also private.

On the 26th, I got back to, um, 

REDUX:  Carkeek Park

Piper's Creek Natural Area

Eddie McAbee Entrance

This park or set of parks or park and set of parks or ... has a map:

but that doesn't really clarify matters.  The entrance is definitely the southernmost bit, and by itself is an ordinary neighbourhood park with an ordinary non-running water fountain.  The park is listed in the real estate report as 172 acres, considerably fewer than the numbers (there are several) usually given.  The area is listed as only 9 acres, the entrance not separately listed.

I entered the second time through the entrance, grateful to avoid Carkeek Park Drive.  Down a steep hill on a graveled trail, I parked the cart and proceeded.  The trail features many deteriorating posts advertising a "story trail" whose text can be found various places, including online.  They date to 2004 and aren't online any more, not even at the Internet Archive.  Maybe a physical copy survives.

The trail is very long even after the "Story Trail" posts give out, and I got less grateful every step.  Much of Carkeek Park's area is spent on vast greenswards, which maybe get used at times other than those I was there.  I had to walk past all of them, both times.

The park's focus - playground, restrooms, etc. - is at the end of this trail, near the stairs to the beach.  The men's room has lockable doors, a working dryer, and as many toilets as both men's rooms at Golden Gardens put together, so I guess Carkeek Park must be very popular sometime or other.

Much space goes to trails, and I gladly climbed one heading north above the beach, hoping it would show me what becomes of the beach.  But in summer the leaves are too thick to see anything else.  Fundamentally, Carkeek Park has two levels, the beach and the rest, and they haven't much to do with each other.

So to find the north wall at last I'd have to walk there myself.  Actually, more like clamber; Carkeek Park's beach of golden sand is much smaller than the one at Golden Gardens, and just feet from the stairs it turned black and white (like the sand at the 57th Street End), then got stony.  I walked the stones a fair way, avoiding all bright black mud and brilliant green seaweed.  And there ahead of me, just as Google Maps had said, lay the wall.  The railroad embankment turned to meet the coast, cutting the beach off.

I'd put the detergent away on the 24th, but continued carrying trash in the valiant plastic bag until a label ripped it on the 29th.

Some last remarks

North Seattle's It Parks, the famous ones closing at 8 P.M., are often walled.  Not Green Lake or Woodland - except metaphorically, by the physical covering of the maps of the former, the lack of maps of the latter.  But at Gas Works you have to imperil your life in traffic to reach a paved entrance.  And at Magnuson, Golden Gardens and Carkeek you have to hike a long way - and perhaps take stairs - to arrive at the good stuff, in each case including but not limited to beaches.

Meteorologist Cliff Mass has argued that park closures, especially closure of parking lots, is class and ability discrimination.  You could add the closure of Golden Gardens Drive in support of his argument.

It's piffle anyway.  Seattle is a progressive city, no more capable of classism or ableism than of racism.  Next thing you know, someone will claim the President behaved badly.

So surely it's just coincidence that there are almost literal walls around much of the Ballard seacoast.  But you know what would really put paid to his argument?  A bus down Seaview Avenue.

All for now, dear Diary; I'm grateful not to have overshot midnight as badly as last time, but I can't continue at this pace.  The next few pages will cover:

1. Crown Hill ("NW")

2. Greenwood (mostly "N")

3. Blue Ridge ("NW", a very short page)

4. Top of the City, part III (mostly "N")

5. Obscure and incipient parks ("NE")

but although none should be anywhere near as long as these pages on the coast, I can't promise a schedule.