Seattle Greenlaker | Mayor Bans Cross-Country Training in Lower Woodland Park Due to Encampment

Mayor bans cross-country training in Lower Woodland Park due to camps

Erica Browne Grivas

August 21, 2021 9:48 am

Youth cross-country skiing coaches across the city are being denied fall permits to train in Lower Woodland Park, a popular training ground due to its varied terrain of hills, trails and fields. Today, like parks across Seattle, these trails are mostly camped in the upper section of the park, with large camps north of the 50th Street entrance and around the picnic areas above the off-leash area.

“They don’t issue permits for its use there,” Corey Batten, one of the Rain City Flyers’ head coaches, told KOMO News.

The Project Seattle team reached out to the parks department and mayor’s office, KOMO reports, and was told the denial was “due to concerns about the current conditions at Woodland Park, including reports from our field crews of camps making some trails block “, took place.

Danny Westneat writes in a column in the Seattle Times today: “It’s a pretty routine scene for Seattle Parks, and one recent day some park goers were throwing frisbees and walking dogs around the tents. But there are now parts of the running track where kids would effectively run through a homeless camp, just yards from tents, piles of rubble, and at one point from electrical extension cords that cross the path.

The Rain City Stampede, an October gathering that has been held in Lower Woodland Park for 30 years, won’t be there this year.

According to KOMO, several thousand young athletes are affected, including over a dozen schools and private running clubs.

Coaches are trying to find other training and competition venues like Magnuson, Lincoln and Genessee Parks, but they cannot accommodate as many runners or offer the same training challenges, reports KOMO.

For years, the tension has grown between a growing need for assistance and shelter for people who are not housed, and the use of parks as safe, healthy natural sanctuaries, but never more than since the pandemic, which saw an unprecedented expansion of tents and RVs in the whole city. As KIRO-TV reported in May, tensions are going in both directions – criminal cases, reports of violence and harassment against the homeless are on the rise.

The Seattle Parks and Recreation website for Woodland Park is still:

East of Aurora, south of Green Lake Park, the park is an ideal spot for picnics with reservable picnic areas, barbecue areas, woodland, pleasant grassy hills and trails. It is also one of the most active centers in the city for sports and recreation….

Let’s find a way to get back there together.

A picnic hut transformed. Image, Erika Shultz for the Seattle Times