Yarrow Bay wetlands offer respite from a busy world

KIRKLAND

The jet-propelled water skis are gone now.

Instead, on a calm January afternoon with no boats on the water, Lake Washington is like a vast reflecting pool. It's an ideal time to visit a place where few ever go yet is only a few hundred feet from one of the busiest highways in the Seattle area.

The Yarrow Bay wetlands lie two miles south of downtown Kirkland and a few hundred feet north of state Highway 520. Thousands of drivers look down on these waters daily, yet a visit there is a little like going to a remote wilderness, a place with no gum wrappers, pop bottles or beer cans.

Unlike more widely known waterfront areas - such as Kirkland's Juanita Bay Park along Market Street, which has parking lots, paved trails and over-water viewing areas - the only way to get to most of the Yarrow Bay wetlands is by boat.

And the boat can't be very big. At this time of year, much of the water depth is only 6 inches, so a canoe or kayak is the only way to visit. Even in summer, depths are only 2 or 3 feet.

Yet for people who make the trip, the vistas are their own reward - only Seattle's Arboretum and Bellevue's Mercer Slough are somewhat comparable.

A taste of the trip is available by land, although it barely hints at what lies on the water.

The land route is accessible from a small parking lot at 101st Way Northeast and Northeast Points Drive, just north of 520, which leads to a trail developed by the city of Kirkland and has interpretive signs. The trail takes 10 minutes to walk but mostly offers views of condominiums, a rail fence and notices warning against disturbing the wetlands.

The better way to go is from the lake itself, with the best launching area at Houghton Beach Park in the 5900 block of Lake Washington Boulevard Northeast. In the summer, canoe and kayak rentals are available, but a launching ramp restricted to human-powered craft is open year-round. It's a 15- to 30-minute ride to the wetlands.

After paddling though some intriguing waterside views of Kirkland's shoreline, visitors enter an area that saw its biggest change 84 years ago. That's when the Hiram M. Chittenden Locks opened in Ballard, dropping Lake Washington's level and turning what had been lake bottom into what are now the wetlands.

Farming began on the site around 1936 and continued into the 1950s.

In 1951, the first urban development was proposed and a channel was dredged into the property extending 1,000 feet south from the lake. The development failed, but if it had proceeded, the area might now look much like Bellevue's Newport Shores. Instead, the old canal now provides the primary water access to the area.

Thousands of tons of fill dirt were dumped along the site when construction began on Highway 520, which opened in 1963.

Changes to state and federal laws beginning in the 1970s, including the Shorelines Management Act, had major effects on what could be done with the property, but intense fights continued over its use into the 1980s.

The final deal was struck in 1986, a swap that gave Kirkland 66 acres of the 84-acre wetlands site in exchange for development permits for condominiums and office buildings around its fringes.

Now the condos and offices have been built, the small city trail developed from Points Drive, and the rest of the property left virtually untouched for more than a decade.

That makes it ideal for wildlife, and a wonderful place for wildlife watching.

Yarrow Bay itself is only about 20 feet deep, and the bottom comes into view 100 feet offshore. More than a half-dozen boats of various kinds are moored there. A huge heron rests motionless atop a neglected red-hulled sailboat until visitors paddled near, sending it swooping low across the water.

At the entrance to the wetlands, a shallow bar has formed. Paddles easily strike the bottom of the startlingly clear water, sending up little eddies of muck.

Crossing the bar, a flock of birds swirls the water surface as the paddlers enter a small lagoon. High-water marks along the banks indicate how the water would be 2 feet deeper later in the year. In January, however, it's possible to go only a few hundred feet into the marshlands before even a canoe strikes bottom.

That's when visitors are forced to stop. There's no one to talk to, of course, because there's nobody else there, which is the beauty of the place. Even the hum of traffic on Highway 520 is barely audible.

A beaver lodge is visible just off to the southwest, and grassy areas roll down to the water while other tiny watercourses trickle onto the channel's surface.

Perhaps most remarkable is the view over the side of the canoe to the channel bottom just inches below. In other parts of the world, people pay money to sit in glass-bottomed boats to look through the water, but on this winter day, the view is available to anyone willing to paddle the distance.

After a few minutes of contemplation, it's time to go. Paddling out of the lagoon brings the moored boats back into view, along with other sights and sounds of civilization.