Redmond Reopens Watershed Preserve -- Trails Rebuilt During Two- Year Closure

REDMOND

A two-year closure of the wooded, picturesque Redmond Watershed Preserve ends tomorrow with the quiet reopening of what is likely to become a more popular destination for hikers, bicyclists and equestrians.

The 800-acre preserve - 10 times larger than the city's next biggest park - will open with seven miles of rebuilt trails through lush woods with four wetlands.

"This is on the scale of a state park, and it's nearly twice the size of (county-owned) Marymoor Park," said Greg Byszeski, the city's parks operations director.

The reopening has been a long time coming. The watershed closed for what was expected to be six months of work but stretched into years.

The changes, however, are expected to draw far more users to the preserve. Already popular with equestrians and bicyclists, the site also will become a destination for walkers and hikers, Byszeski predicted.

For the first time, the preserve has carefully marked trails and maps. This makes it available to more than just the adventurous willing to risk getting lost or hurt on makeshift routes that sometimes plunged down ravines and through streams, Byszeski said.

"A lot of people didn't feel comfortable," he said of the preserve, whose trails had been blazed by users and were never maintained by the city.

"They were really not built properly, nor were they planned properly," park planner Roy Lehner said of the trails, which went through some wetlands and had poor drainage.

The new trails include separate routes for bicyclists and equestrians to reduce conflicts between the preserve's users. Both are allowed on multiuse trails, and hikers are permitted on all routes. There is also an interpretive Tree Frog Loop trail that leads past a beaver lodge as tall as a portable restroom, which has been added at the watershed.

The preserve, east of the Redmond city limits between Novelty Hill Road and Northeast 133rd Street, has a lengthy history but has had little attention from the city. Redmond bought the first of the preserve's land in 1926 to create a water supply, but the water quality did not meet state standards. Other projects proposed for the site were an airport, golf course and industrial park.

Two years ago, the City Council approved a master plan that called for protecting the watershed's ecosystems - home to wildlife including blacktail deer, great blue herons, downy woodpeckers, cougars and several hard-working beaver that have forced trails to be rerouted around their work.

Of secondary importance, City Council members declared, is recreation and education. And since flora and fauna come first, the city has made what may be a controversial decision to prohibit dogs and other pets, except for guide dogs. Also, smoking is not permitted.

Work continues at the preserve, so the "official" opening, complete with speeches, will not be until fall. Two permanent parking lots still must be added, to include a paved lot for cars and a gravel lot for equestrians and their horses.

In the meantime, a temporary lot is open off Novelty Hill Road at the Pipeline Entrance, between 218th Avenue Northeast and 220th Place Northeast. There also is parking at the watershed's Northeast 133rd Street entrance, and on weekends and evenings at Wilder Elementary School, 22300 N.E. 133rd St., Woodinville.

The $1.6 million watershed project was funded by a King County open-space bond measure. Byszeski expects the preserve to be discovered for the first time by many Redmond residents.

"I'm going to get a kick out of seeing Redmond citizens come out here and realize what a treasure it is," he said. "You get out here, and within five minutes you feel like you've transported yourself to a different place."