Eagle Landing Stairway Closed for Inspection

This news is a bit ironic, given the nature of the preceding post ("High Tide Holiday Adventure"). On December 12th the City of Burien announced closure of the stairway at Eagle Landing Park, following recent storm surge activity. We've highlighted in a previous post how high, wind-driven tides have already damaged the bottom of the stairway down at the beach. Now it appears that even the stairway's supporting piers may have moved at places higher up along the hillside.

This remarkable stairway was quite ingeniously designed to withstand slow but consistent earth movements along the wet, steep slope (see book sidebar, p. 187). Nonetheless city officials have decided to keep walkers off the stairway structure indefinitely, pending further evaluation of its safety and integrity.

The damaged base of the Eagle Landing stairway as of March, 2014

Burien is still a great neighborhood to explore! For an alternative to the Eagle Landing route detailed in our book, we highly recommend the Indian Trail. It's a "local secret" walking trail that winds between homes near the shore around Three Tree Point. There's a wonderful stairway too!

For a good map and description of the Indian Trail that you can follow on your own, click here at the WABI Burien website (WABI Burien is a walking and bicycling advocacy and activity group). The stairway runs from SW 171st Street near the start of the route linked above.  It isn't a loop route, so you'll either have to find your own way back or arrange for a vehicle at the end.

  

High Tide Holiday Adventure!

Here's how adventurous readers can engineer a unique stairway adventure along the "Alki From Above" route (Chapter 18). It's not for the faint of heart, because you'll need to do this route specifically when the tides are high and the weather is terrible. Under these conditions you'll get a bonus of spectacular waves crashing over the Alki breakwater and running high across the walkway. We tell you how to do it, below.

Meantime consider that Seattle Stairway Walks: An Up-and-Down Guide to City Neighborhoods could be the perfect holiday present for your favorite urban explorer or cabin-fevered mountain hiker. You can purchase it online, direct from Mountaineers Books, right here!

The picture above is a relatively tame example of what we're talking about. It was taken this morning when the tide topped out at 12 feet, with only mild winds. Gusts up to 60mph are possible tonight, but high tide tops out at just 8 1/2 feet, so conditions won't be bad enough to be really good.

Still with us? The Washington State Department of Ecology has this handy chart predicting when "King Tides" are expected for Seattle. King Tides are the highest, most humongous of the high tides. It just happens that our next King Tide, topping 13 feet, comes on Christmas morning and for the next two mornings after that. So if these extremely high tides are accompanied by stormy winds, a holiday stairway walk on the "Alki From Above" route may come with an extra adrenaline treat for you and yours!