Years of planning results in new trail at Marine park
Eleanor Yarkin, Reporter
  In the past several years, Maury Marine Park has been transformed from a blackberry-covered gravel mine to a popular park that is utilized daily by people from on and off the island. This year, a new trail is being built to expand the current trail network to provide access to acres of previously unreachable forest.
  A section of the trail is complete now and will be open for public use in early 2019. When the remainder of the trail is finished, it will connect to the shore near lower Gold Beach and possibly continue to Maury Island Natural Area (MINA) and Dockton Forest.
  “I was looking for opportunities, places where the county owned some land where there were not any trails, and noticed the whole west part of Maury Marine Park was inaccessible,” Executive Director of the Vashon Maury Island Land Trust (VMILT) Tom Dean said.
  The new trails are a result of the cooperation between VMILT, King County Parks Sunset District (KCPSD), the Washington Trails Association (WTA), and the local island group Friends of Maury Park (FOMP). Volunteers from both on and off island also played a role in building the trails.
  “This trail started out as a request from … FOMP eight or nine years ago,” KCPSD parks specialist Joe Van Hollebeke said.
  The new trail is now part of a trail development campaign organized by VMILT about four years ago. The campaign is called “Five New Trails in Five Years” and has already resulted in openings at Frog Holler, Judd Creek, and Shingle Mill Creek.
  “The Maury Marine trail is our fourth [new trail],” Dean said. “Next year we are going to be building a trail behind Vashon Community Care, and it’s going to be an American Disabilities Act trail.”
  Trail builders have focused on making new trails available for multiple uses, including walking, mountain biking, and horse riding.
  “We like to build a trail that is good for all user groups … so it takes a lot of planning and careful layout to get the trail in a spot that can work for [everyone],” Van Hollebeke said.
  The new Maury Marine trail will be built in three phases and is targeted to be complete in the spring of 2020.
  Phase one — which is now completed — was made possible by adding an additional three-quarter mile loop that connects to the preexisting High Point trail. The second phase consists of a connecting mile of trail heading west through the park. It is slated for completion in the summer of 2019. Finally, phase three will end the trail by connecting it to lower Gold Beach.
  The terrain is difficult to build on because it is steep and densely vegetated. A large portion of the trail was built with the help of WTA volunteers.
  “WTA is a group that takes volunteers out to work on trails all over the state,” Van Hollebeke said. “King County parks has worked with them for many years in other locations, but we have had a hard time getting them to do work projects on the island because we did not have a place for them to stay.”
  In 2016, Vashon Adventures partnered with King County parks to provide camping at Maury Marine Park. WTA crew leaders and volunteers are now able to set up week-long work parties to build and maintain trails.
  “[WTA] is a really fantastic organization, and this is the first major project they’ve done on Vashon,” Dean said. “We are hoping that [VMILT] can continue partnering with them on more trail construction in the coming years”
  As a long-term goal, the new trail will connect with both MINA and Dockton Forest.
  Currently, the finished segment of the new trail travels lower into the woods and exposes multiple viewpoints that look out over the East Passage, Tacoma, and Mt. Rainier.
  “This is a project that has taken many years,” Van Hollebeke said. “It is a culmination of local people asking for something and us, as a park district, figuring out how [to] make it happen and lining up all the resources.”