The Washington State Hiking Podcast

Hiking on Vashon Island

• Episode 4

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Welcome to The Washington State hiking podcast. I'm your host Jennie Thwing Flaming. Along with my part time co host guidebook, author Craig Romano. We provide practical and timely seasonal hiking advice for hikers, trail runners and potential hikers and trail runners of all skill and ability levels. That is helpful, accurate, fun and inclusive. We would love to hear from you, our listeners, the second link in the show notes right below the tip jar. Hint Hint, is our voice memo link. Please leave us a voice memo with your question. And we will answer it in a future episode. Or island getaway that super convenient and perfect for spring. That's what this episode is all about. Hi, everyone, Jennie here. So this episode I'm doing without Craig. He is my awesome part time co host but I'm also doing some solo episodes in between. And this is one of those. So I'm in episode three, which was the last episode Craig and I dove into a whole bunch of different places that we love for hiking in spring. And so what we're going to be doing for the next couple months is doing a deeper dive into some of the awesome spring hikes and hiking areas around Washington state. And today we are talking about Vashon Island. And we mentioned that in last week's episode Vashon is a wonderful hiking destination. First of all, if you live in Seattle or Tacoma, you can take transit there or bike there, which is pretty awesome. You can of course also drive there. If you live in other parts of the state, like maybe you're in eastern Washington and you are ready to see some salt water or a beach or wherever you are, this is a great place to go. So it's March right now. And one thing that's really cool about all the islands for hiking in Washington state is that pretty much you can do them year round. Of course, there's less daylight and more rain in the winter. But they are wonderful year round, usually snow free destinations, and VASHAUN is no exception. So in March, you know we often have rain and then wind and then maybe sun and then rain again. So weather can be super unpredictable. And that's just part of the way it is but the island hiking is pretty chill no matter what the weather and Vashon does have some great hikes with views. But there are also some wonderful hikes that are just in the forests that are great, kind of for any type of weather. So I'm going to share a little bit about getting there about some of the hiking options, and some of my favorite places to stop after a hike on Vashon. And I will also put in the show notes. A link to my article on my website that's about Vashon Island hiking. These hikes on Vashon Island are also in Craig's book urban hikes Seattle, which includes these hikes so you can pick that up too. All right, so let's start with getting to bash on. So Vashon is an island that is in the Salish Sea or Puget Sound, you have to get to it by ferry, there is no bridge. And you can get to it by ferry either from West Seattle from the following a ferry terminal. Or you can get there from point defiance in Tacoma. So you can take your car with you, or you can leave your car behind and take the bus once you're on the island, or you can bike so I'm going to talk about all of those here a little bit. Some of the hikes on Vashon are definitely easier to get to with a car, they're a little bit further away from the bus route. But they're all doable with a bus or a bike without a car if you either don't want to drive or you don't have a car. So the Washington State ferries, as you probably know have definitely struggled around their schedule. So I don't really recommend going to any Island when you're on a super tight schedule, right? Like I have to be home by five o'clock for this very important thing I would say going to Baton is not ideal in that scenario. It's nice if you're not on a schedule, so you can kind of take it easy and not worry too much about what fare you're on. Especially if you're driving by because you don't have to wait for a while to get on the ferry, especially on Fridays going over to Vashon. And on Sunday is coming back and kind of normal commute times there are people who commute from Vashon to both Seattle and Tacoma every day. So if you are bringing a car getting to all these hikes is pretty straightforward. The biggest hassle with bringing a car we'll just be waiting for the ferry. But that can also be fun. If you're taking the bus and I'm It's King County Metro, so you pay for Metro with your ORCA card just like you do for any other bus route in the city. And the buses are fairly well structured around the ferry schedule. So that is a good thing to be aware of. It doesn't always work out perfectly. But that's the idea. So once you get onto Vashon, there is the Metro route 118 and 119. If you take the ferry from Tacoma, it's the 118 bus that goes to that south part of the island. And basically the bus goes across the island on the main road with a couple of loops. So whatever hike you're going to, you know, you may need to walk a bit further. Like I mentioned before, if you're taking a bike, it's very easy to take a bike on the ferry, if you haven't done that before. It's a little goofy, because you kind of just ride your bike on with cars and then tie it up with a yellow rope. But basically you just bring your bike down and the ferry folks will direct you when it's your turn to board and your turn to get off. And biking on the island is pretty chill. There is a bit of a hill, like all the islands in Washington have that is lovingly called the ferry Hill, which is going from the ferry landing up into the island that's typically a mellow or steep hill. It's kind of a steep hill on VASHAUN. But it doesn't last for too long. And I'm not a big bike rider. So when I do this, I just walk my bike up the hill, and don't worry about it. But that of course is up to you. Okay, so however you get there. Let's talk a little bit about some of the best hikes on Vashon. So I'm gonna start with the ones that have kind of great views and that are good for a sunny day or maybe a partly sunny day. And that includes my absolute favorite hike on Vashon which is Maury Island Marine Park. One thing that I wanted to mention about all of the hikes on Vashon. Even though you do have to pay some money to take the ferry or end or the bus and or bring your car on the ferry. There are no parking fees at any of the hikes on Vashon. So that's kind of cool. Okay, so Maury Island, Marine Park is one of the ones that's a little longer to get to by bus. You basically just ask the driver where you should get off to go there it is about a mile and a half from the bus stop to the trailhead. So just know that if you're up for adding kind of three miles to this hike, the bus will work great. Otherwise, it can be better to have a car or a bike. The hike itself is about two and a half miles round trip to the beach. And it's downhill on the way to the beach and uphill on the way back. And you can also make it into a loop, which is kind of cool. But it's still about the same distance. It's about 400 feet down. And then if you take the switchback trail back up the side of the hill, it's about 500 feet up on the way back. The the road side of the trail is steep, but it's quite wide. And the switchback II trail that goes up the hill, even though it's short, it is pretty steep and slippery in sections. So just wanted to make you aware of that. Once you get down there. You can also walk along the beach for quite a ways. There are also some kayak in campsites down there, which is pretty cool. Once you're down there. The view is absolutely stunning. It's an extremely quiet beach. I've never seen more than a handful of people on this hike at all their logs to sit on. There are wonderful views of Tahoma Mount Rainier, and it's just a wonderful, wonderful hike, but it is a little bit steep, even though there's not a lot of elevation gain. It's also short. So that's my personal favorite, especially for a sunny day. Especially sunny winter day because it can kind of trick you into thinking it's a little bit summery. So same thing for those gray. Those gray spring days too. Okay, So a couple other great options that have more miles of hiking are the island center forest, which is a great one to get to you. By bus. It is about a mile from the bus stop to the trailhead, but it's pretty flat and pretty easy to navigate. And if you're driving to the island center for us, there are four different places you can drive or park around the outside of it. So there are 10 miles of trails in Island center forest, I'd recommend getting the map you can get it from County Parks website, I also have it in my article that I linked to in the show notes a link to that map, it's helpful to have it because you can kind of build your own loops and go as long or as short as you want. It's the trails, some of the trails are fairly wide, some of them are more narrow. If you did all the trails in the park, you would have up to a couple 100 feet of elevation gain. But really, there's not much elevation gain in this park. So it's a good option for any weather, you just want to get out in the forest and have some solitude. It's a really, it's a great hike. Also, another one along those lines is docked in forest. So that is more down on the south end of the island. But it has more elevation gain, still not a ton. But you can go up to about 500 feet of elevation gain and up to 10 miles. But again, you can do much shorter hikes within the doctrine forest. And yeah, so it's another great option. And again, a place with lots of solitude. Really wonderful. One last hike that I'm going to recommend on Vashon is burn Cove and the shingle Mill Creek Preserve. So it is beautiful. It takes you to a very quiet little beach, but the trail to get down there is super muddy. So if you're cool with navigating, like a lot of mud, like make sure that your shoes are tied tightly so that they don't fall off in the mud mud, then it is a really beautiful little spot. And you can learn more about that on my website have more details about all of these hikes. Okay in my Vashon article. So one other thing I wanted to mention on Vash on that is, is not really a hike, but is kind of a cool, very cool place to stop is the lighthouse where the troll is. So if you haven't been to any of the trolls yet that are around this greater Seattle area, one of them is on Vashon. And it's really cool. It's very close to where you park, you can find it on Google Maps. And there's also a beautiful lighthouse on the beach close to there, that's about a quarter mile of a walk down a trail that is not super steep, but it has a couple of steps and a few routes and that sort of thing. But getting to the troll is very straightforward. It's a very short, maybe 100 feet from where you park your car, and it's basically flat. So that is very cool. We are going to take a short break. And when we come back, I'm going to share just a few more details about visiting Vashon and a few of my favorite places to go on the island. Hi, everyone. Jennie here. Hope you're enjoying this episode. So far, we would love to have you contribute to our tip jar. This will help keep our podcast going and bringing you lots of great information from both Craig and I about Washington hikes. So you'll find out the first link in the show notes. The other thing I wanted to tell you is that we have a voice memo setup, and we would love to hear from you. We would love to answer your questions in future episodes. And we would love to hear your feedback. So go to that second link in the show notes. To leave us a message you just click through there and then record the message and we'll get it in our inbox. Thank you so much. Now back to the show. And we are back and we're talking about Vashon Island in this episode and how wonderful it is year round, but especially in the spring. So before I wrap up this episode, I wanted to mention a few of the things that I like to talk about, kind of in all of our episodes as much as possible with things like parking and restrooms, self service, that kind of thing talked about Park are keen and taking the bus quite a bit already. Not all of these trailheads have pit toilets. So some of them do docked in forest does and, but most of the others do not. So there are places to stop and use the restroom on the island businesses or the ferry terminal. But there isn't as much restroom infrastructure at these trailheads as there isn't some others, you should have good self service across the island. All of the trails I mentioned are dog friendly, as long as you have your dog on leash, they're all King County Parks except for the lighthouse, which I believe is not a King County Park, but I'm not totally sure about that. So yeah, they're, they're great places that aren't too busy with friendly dogs and people. And yeah, so bringing your dog is no problem. And then finally, I wanted to mention a few favorite places to stop on Vashon. Vashon has lots of wonderful small restaurants. And so it's a great place to have a meal and kind of make a day out of your trip. There's also the dragon's head cider, cider cidery and they have a new Taproom that just opened a couple of months ago in town, but also during the summer, you can actually visit where the cider is made. And I assume they'll still have that open along with their Taproom that they opened this winter in town. So that's a really cool place to go. I also really love the brewery in unfasten there's a couple different options. I'm the one that I really love is camp Cobos. Brewing. And that's really, that they have a big patio outside. That's really nice. There's also the Vashon brewing community pub, which is also a good option. As far as food goes, the hardware store is great for sit down restaurant, that's the name of a restaurant, not an actual hardware store. There's also a great pizza place on Vashon. And I really love Snapdragon, it's a wonderful bakery, highly, highly recommended. And there's a couple of wineries on Vashon that have tasting rooms. They're open, somewhat limited hours, especially this time of year, they have more hours in the summer, but you can check out their websites for all about that. So those are some of my favorite highlights about Vashon. I hope you enjoyed hearing about that and make your way over there sometime this spring. I also wanted to remind you that Craig and I have a tip jar that's in the show notes if you want to help support the podcast and keep us going. And also we would love to hear from you in a voice memo with your questions that we will answer in upcoming episodes. So there is a link in the show notes. It's right below the tip jar, you click the link and then you can record a voice message for us, and then we will answer it some point in the future. Thanks for joining me for this episode of The Washington State hiking podcast. See you next week.

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Jennie Thwing Flaming

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Craig Romano

Co-host