Bridle Trails State Park: One Big Green Swath Surrounded by Suburbia

Mission: Explore the surprisingly intact native coniferous forests and intricate trail network of 482-acre  atop Rose Hill, largely in Kirkland but also edging into Bellevue. Although a designated equestrian park, at Bridle Trails hikers, runners and dog walkers share the paths and achieve serenity in a veritable jungle of mossy maple, towering fir and cedar, head-high salal, Oregon grape, red and evergreen huckleberry.

Route: We’re taking a grand, three-mile loop largely on the perimeter-oriented Coyote Trail, but also sampling the park's two other named routes, the Trillium and Raven trails. Elevation gain is minimal, perhaps 150 feet, since the park is mostly flat with some rills, minor ravines and ridges. Find the spacious parking lot on the east side of 116th Avenue Northeast, just south of Interstate 405 Exit 17.

Rules: Dogs are allowed, but only on leash. This is a safety issue due to the presence of horse riders. Equestrians have the right-of-way; those on foot must stop and stand at the side of the trail as the beasts and their burden pass. Bicycles and motorcycles strictly prohibited. Cautions: horsey doo-doo here and there on the tread; poor trail signage, making it a good idea to print this:http://bridletrails.org/Trail_Map.html (also attached).

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YOU COULD WANDER for days on the 28-mile maze of trails inside Bridle Trails State Park, which really helps spread out the crowds that come to experience this huge swath of beautiful green forest completely surrounded by suburbia.

On weekends, especially in summer, the park can get busy. On rainy weekends and weekdays, however, the park is quiet, lonesome and contemplative. You can be pretty much alone to walk off your worries or run away city-life stress in deep, tall, cool forest.

“It’s designed to be a forested oasis in the middle of a suburban setting,” says Ken Hite, president of the Bridle Trails Park Foundation, a nonprofit group that helps the state maintain the park. “It’s an old-growth forest park, especially on the west side. To the east side there has been some timber harvesting.

“Today it’s preserved as a natural area, and we work in partnership with the park to keep it that way.”

The trees are indeed big here, some of them honest virgin timber up to five-feet thick and 250 years old. But most of the forest on our route is second-growth Douglas fir, Western hemlock and Western red cedar that is well on its way to becoming seriously immense.

It is believed that the forest was selectively logged in the 1920s, which would make most of the forest some 90 years old.

WE STARTED at the three-way trailhead on the northeast corner of the parking lot and took the middle and widest path. This is the Trillium Trail, which makes a 1.6-mile loop basically through the heart of the park.

It’s wide, and we followed it counterclockwise south about one-quarter mile to an intersection, taking a right southward on the Coyote Trail.  This one makes a 3.5-mile loop largely along the outer edge of the park.

The three main trails here are marked occasionally with small icon signs: a paw print for the Coyote Trail, a leaf pattern for the Trillium and a wing for the one-mile Raven Trail, which makes a loop in the park’s northwest corner.

It’s impossible to get lost here, since roads and suburbia surround the entire park and you can usually hear traffic. But I found myself checking the map often to keep on route. Generally, the three main trails are very wide to accommodate horse traffic, so we found ourselves taking the widest path when faced with a choice.

“Some of the trails wind around, and we do get people who lose their way,” Hite said.

We followed the Coyote Trail to the park’s southern edge, the Bellevue side, noting the pristine nature of the forest. Invasive, non-native plants such as English ivy and holly are largely absent. Native shrubs like Oregon grape, huckleberry and sword ferns proliferate. I’ve seen few places in Western Washington where large patches of salal are so dense and so high.

Horses passed by every so often, and we gave way on the edge of the trail, exchanging pleasantries with the riders. In places the trail was muddy, churned up by hooves, but foundation and park maintenance crews have used lots of gravel as ballast, so overall the tread is in great shape.

IN 2002 during a budget pinch, Washington State Parks put Bridle Trails on a list of parks for potential closure. That’s when local park users, mostly equestrian-oriented, formed the foundation in an effort to save it.

Ultimately, a unique, 40-year agreement was signed that stipulates the foundation pay 50 percent of the park’s operating costs. This is done through various annual events and fundraising appeals. You can get on the foundation's mailing list at its website, bridletrails.org.

“There is no other agreement like this in the state,” Hite said. “We do this on a 100 percent volunteer basis.”

On the southeast side of the park we were surprised to see large patches of tall evergreen huckleberry bushes, a lowland shrub very common on the Washington coast but unusual in the Puget Sound basin. In late summer its berries are blue and sweet — native peoples ate them and dried them for winter use. I had never seen this species growing wild anywhere in the Kirkland area.

We followed the Coyote Trail as it turned northward on the park’s eastern side, here and there seeing large, gnarly barked Douglas fir trees spared the logger’s saw — back in the day they used a long, two-man crosscut known as a “misery whip.”

As we reached the park’s northeast corner, we took one of many intriguing narrow paths west into its heart, soon intercepting the Trillium Trail. This we followed in counterclockwise fashion to connect with the Raven Trail. We took the Raven as it looped through the park’s northwest corner, often through head-high salal.

The Raven Trail ends at the park’s “Big Ring” horse arena near the parking lot, where we finished our satisfying three-mile trek.

At a trail kiosk nearby we learned we had missed seeing the park’s largest concentration of huge old conifers. We were disappointed — but left with one very good reason to return.