A Hike near Jackson Park

Dear Diary,

There are three city properties just south of Jackson Park, two of which are fairly substantial parks in their own rights.  I remember taking some photos before, but apparently never showed them to you.  I think this is because the parks are called "Natural Area"s, and since at that time I anticipated lots of publicity for you, I worried that I would lead mobs to those unprotected places.

Well, even aside from the grandiosity, I was also worrying too much.  It's freaking hard to get into most natural areas except along approved trails.  And nature itself is at least as destructive to those as they are to nature.  Further south, we'll see a "Natural Area" and a park that might as well be called that, blighted with litter; but these larger parks are too far out of the way for much of that.

A map:

Now here goes, the non-park first:

Jackson Park P-Patch

This is frequently referred to as part of Jackson Park, and its benches:

may have been mentioned in relation to the natural areas, but it's actually tracked by the city as a separate property from all three.  Here's another photo:

I'm coming to appreciate P-Patches that aren't built around stairs, and this is one, entirely on the flat.

Flicker Haven Natural Area

This park, somewhat bigger than eight acres, is poorly treated by mappers.  Open Street Map doesn't name it, though it shows most of its area as woods.  Google Maps allows it, under the name "Thornton Creek Park", to fade into Jackson Park.  The mappers of the Thornton Creek watershed (PDF) show most of its northern border as at the level of NE 133rd St, which ends at the northeast corner of the P-Patch, but Green Seattle Partnership shows that border as at the Jackson Park Perimeter Trail.

If the latter is right, then maybe the previous page showed you a photo of this park, and its northeastern part is relatively walkable.

But because all "Natural Area"s in North Seattle revolve around creeks, they all normally present the challenge of verticality to any would-be hiker or trail-builder.  Flicker Haven's people have mostly dealt with this by not building trails.  I looked pretty hard Monday, and everywhere I looked, had gone last year too.  First, though, the sign just south of the P-Patch on 10th Ave NE:

The way to tell whether one is on an official trail in Beaver Pond Natural Area further south is that the official trails have signs warning hikers not to leave their dogs' Number Twos lying around.  This is much nicer, and can also be seen along the main non-Jackson Park Perimeter Trail trail through Flicker Haven.

The best way to find access to Natural Areas is to go to the dead ends that end at them, or any streets that border them.  In this case, since I'd already walked 10th Ave NE, past the end there of NE 133rd St, I knew there wasn't a way in along that side.  So I went to the park's western side, where Google Maps shows short borders to what it calls "Thornton Creek Park" along NE 130th St (the instance of 130th that goes from Roosevelt Way NE past 8th Ave NE) and along 8th Ave NE just before it turns into 8th Court NE.

At 130th, there's worn grass suggesting a trail, but once one enters the woods, this turns out to have been a red herring.  There is, however, a creek close at hand, so I took a photo:

Where 8th Ave turns, a trail does appear, continuing along the line of 8th Ave into the woods.  Tall vegetation along most of this trail means it has very little view of the creek or its valley, except at the beginning, where there's a grassy patch near 8th Ave, allowing views like this:

This trail goes straight to the Jackson Park Perimeter Trail, so I figured maybe the perimeter trail was the northern border of the Natural Area.  Depends who you believe, whether these are photos of Jackson Park or of Flicker Haven, but anyway, one can't walk far south from the perimeter trail along either side of the creek.

Licorice Fern Natural Area

This not-quite eight-acre park seems to have been quite accessible once upon a time.  In "Top of the City", part II I identified Flicker Haven as formerly named Thornton Creek Park #1, but actually it's Licorice Fern, as witness the page in Year of Seattle Parks, which refers to seating.  The map produced by consultants (PDF), which is also available in the park itself:

shows easy trails and bridges across the creek.

Reality is somewhat different:

Those consultants described the bridges as "temporary", and this one, the western one, certainly was.  However, there are creekside trails (the one on the north side involves walking a fallen tree for quite a ways), so it's still possible, with the help of the surviving eastern bridge, to walk the entire loop.

Early along the trail to that bridge, one passes a whole lot of ferns:

To judge by pictures, these might be the titular ferns.  I didn't notice flickers in Flicker Haven, nor, to anticipate a bit, beavers in Beaver Pond.

A view from the bridge:

As for the seating?  The consultants suggested a park sign, a kiosk, a trash can and a tool box as improvements for the entrance.  They got two out of four.  The kiosk is where their map was installed.  Here's the tool box, the only thing resembling seating I found:

I set my satchels on it to eat supper.  Here are the entrances to the trail, along the eastern of which, a short way in, is the kiosk - barely visible in this photo:

I see now from the maps that I only explored a relatively small part of this Natural Area, and should really have gone to the dead ends around its northeastern part too, but considering how much I had on my plate, and how many photos are now crowding my phone, I'm kind of glad I left it for another time.

All for now, dear Diary, but there are still plenty more photos to show you tonight.  Until then.