Clay Pit Road, Mine Shaft Trail — Sunday, Jan. 31, 2016

Issaquah Alps > Cougar Mountain

If you're looking for an easy flat stroll through the woods then the Sky Country portion of Cougar Mountain park is a great choice. The area between Anti Aircraft Peak and Wilderness peak is a gently undulating plateau with lots of small creeks and marshy areas. We started at the Sky Country Trailhead which was an old Nike Missile Defense base in WW2. A map is nice to have since the maze of trails and looping opportunities are bit mind boggling. The Clay Pit has undergone a major transformation in 2015. The Clay Pit was a huge open mine used for harvesting clay for the Mutual Material brick plant in Newcastle since the early '70s. It's always been a nasty industrial looking eyesore in the middle of Cougar Mtn Park. Recently Mutual Materials closed down and sold its brick plant to the Avalon development company (currently under construction with 900 residences planned!). Since the mining has stopped, King Co has apparently undertaken a big rehabilitation project to help the Clay Pit revert back to nature. It looks like they have sculpted the landscape, put down top soil and hydro seeded the entire area. It already looks much better than ever. The small lake at the east end of the pit is now growing Cattails for the first time. The late Harvey Manning (founder of Issaquah Alps Trails Club) had written about his dream of The Clay Pit some day being allowed to revert back to nature in more than a few of his manuscripts. I always thought that what he wrote was very captivating and now thanks to King Co Parks, it is finally beginning to come true: "The pit itself will become one of the park's crowning glories. In the final manipulations of the terrain, islets and peninsulas can be fashioned to serve as nesting sanctuaries; plank walkways and platforms might be built for non-intrusive viewing. The very first spring the mallards will be nesting, by the next year the frogs and newts and muskrats and their ilk will establish themselves, and before long all the area's resident and migratory wildfowl will put it on their itineraries. Soon the walker will have to beware of the nest-guarding redwing blackbird. In a couple of decades the cottonwoods that will grow tall from the shores will catch the attention of the great blue herons, who will establish a heronry: to give the seclusion they want, their chosen sanctuary will be protected from public entry, a viewing site established so visitors can unobtrusively observe the February-to-June courtship, mating, nesting, and rearing of the young."