West Duwamish Greenbelt Trails, Puget Park - Seattle & Seattle Chinese Garden — Sunday, Jan. 12, 2025

We decided to check out the West Duwamish Greenbelt today, which we had never been to! 

ITINERARY

The trail network is pretty extensive and it's easy to get lost, so we used the West Duwamish Greenbelt Trails PDF map, Gaia, and Google Maps together to make our way around. 

We started at the Pathfinder School, wandered through the Pigeon Point Park trails, then hiked through Puget Park and Alder Flats to connect down to the Seattle Chinese Garden. We walked around both the Seattle Chinese Garden and the South Seattle College Arboretum, then decided to walk up 16th Ave SW back to Puget Park before heading back through the Park to Pigeon Point Park and to the parking lot. 

THE ROAD / PARKING LOT

We parked at the Pathfinder School, which wasn't gated over the weekend. There weren't any other cars parked there when we got there around 9:45, and only one other car parked there when we got back a couple of hours later. 

There was a port-a-potty next to the entrance into Pigeon Point Park that I didn't use, but it wasn't padlocked and seemed usable. There's a map of the greenbelt on a bulletin board near the entrance to the park. 

THE TRAIL

The trails were fun to explore! If you look at the greenbelt map, there are solid yellow lines ("improved trail"), dotted yellow lines ("partially improved trail"), and dotted red lines ("rough, steep, adventurous trail").

The solid yellow lines were in great shape, and the dotted yellow lines we took were also in pretty good shape.

We took both of the dotted red lines that connect Pigeon Point Park and Puget Park, and those trails were rough, especially the long red western one. To start, you have a steep drop, which has 2 ropes that are helpful in heading down. Both pictures in this trip report of the red trails are of this part. The trail was quite muddy, with lots of log stairs that were required careful stepping, and very steep. I sort of wish I'd had my poles! We made it just fine, but it was way more rugged than we expected. That said, the trails were easy to follow, at least.  

The trails in Alder Flats that we took were the only other problematic trails — they were super muddy, to the point that we were slipping around. It was for this reason we took the road back up, instead of hiking back through this part. 

MISC.

It was a super quiet day in the greenbelt today. We only saw a handful of folks all day, and that includes a couple of people we saw on our stint on the street. 

We came across multiple access points to the greenbelt, and we saw waterproof maps at each one, which was cool.

And speaking of maps, Google Maps and Gaia don't have all the trails shown on their maps, so I recommend having both of them and the greenbelt PDF map so you don't get lost out there!