MERYL SCHENKER / P-I
The Sammamish Saddle Club takes advantage of the forests in Soaring Eagle Regional Park between Sammamish and Fall City.

Drive around anywhere in decreasingly rural east King County and look out over the land. If instead of seeing bulldozers clearing lots, or new homes being framed, you see green forests, alder-lined streams or towering cottonwoods along riverbed, chances are that land is public.

And chances are you can go there to toss a fly for steelhead, set up your easel and paint a landscape scene, hike through native forests, ride your mountain bike or horse, bird watch, or just sit and relax.

And chances are that you don't know these places even exist.

As population and development explode through places like Sammamish, Black Diamond, Duvall and Enumclaw, King County land managers are quietly but aggressively working to acquire, restore and manage new public lands for parks, trails, open space and habitat.

		Meryl Schenker / P-I
	Allan Sande, director of the Quiet Heart Wilderness School, instructs Dylan Ruef, 16, of Bothell in elk tracking. The group paused at the Snoqualmie River in the Three Forks Natural Area at the base of Mount Si.

Over the past 15 or more years, thousands of acres in dozens of plots have been acquired all over the county. Today the King County Department of Natural Resources and Parks manages 180 parks totaling 5,000 acres, plus 20,000 more acres of open space, 175 miles of official trails and uncounted miles of unofficial "local" trails that lace much of the newer lands.

County land managers acknowledge that many of the newer parks and most of the open space are unknown to the public at large.

"We're trying to change that," says David Kimmett, a natural resource coordinator for the county who manages thousands of acres in the region from Issaquah to Carnation. "There is a lot of local knowledge for sure, but we're trying to get some of these sites known to the larger public. Those of us working in this program, we've been discussing this for quite awhile: What is the best way to make this accessible to people?"

Some of the lands are acquired simply as critical habitat that will never see much public use, like wetlands and marshes that are not easily accessible. But most will see increasing use as development and population expand and the demand for outdoor recreation increases.

Right now most of these lands are detailed to varying extents on the county parks Web pages, and you might be surprised at the long list of green places you've probably never heard about.

For example, Soaring Eagle Park is spread across 637 acres -- one square mile -- between Sammamish and Fall City, with 12 miles of trails. Recently it was the subject of a hot little controversy between local horse riders, mountain bikers and hikers and the city of Sammamish. The city is in the process of acquiring 30 acres of the park from the county for ball fields; the group Friends of Soaring Eagle Park was formed by park users who want its forests left as is.

Nearby Duthie Hill Park is a 120-acre forest where the county is working with Seattle-based Backcountry Bicycle Trails Club to build a mountain bike park.

Pinnacle Peak Park's 173 acres embrace a prominence in Enumclaw long hiked by locals for its views.

		MERYL SCHENKER / P-I
	A short path leads from the Three Forks Natural Area parking lot to the Snoqualmie River.

Chinook Bend Natural Area near Carnation protects an oxbow bend in the Snoqualmie River heavily fished by steelhead and salmon anglers, and protects prime spawning habitat for the federally protected wild chinook salmon of Puget Sound.

Preston Ridge Park is not really a park at all, but rather 190 acres of little-used forest along Interstate 90 between High Point and Preston, with no facilities at all.

"I think this is a good example of the greening of the Mountains to Sound Greenway," Kimmett says about Preston Ridge during a recent tour of several of these lands. "For now that's enough. We're basically baby-sitting this land. In another generation, someone might come along and say, 'There has to be a trailhead here.' "

It might come sooner than that. Just across Interstate 90 is the incredibly busy Tradition Lake trailhead in the state's popular Tiger Mountain State Forest. Yet few people explore the forests of Preston Ridge, which has no real trails, and not many people even hike the trail network of nearby Grand Ridge Park, which can be reached via the High Point trailhead less than a quarter-mile from the Tradition Lake trailhead.

On a recent Saturday I hiked from the High Point trailhead to a new trail on Grand Ridge built by the Washington Trails Association, and followed it up onto the ridge near the expansive new planned community called Issaquah Highlands. There might have been 100 cars at Traditional Lake trailhead, but none at High Point.

We followed the new trail through a grove of towering, thick and very old Douglas fir to the top of the ridge, then followed the main Grand Ridge Trail back down to what's known as the Coal Mine trailhead along an old railroad bed that is now the Issaquah to High Point Trail. This we followed back to the High Point trailhead, along the East Fork of Issaquah Creek, completing a loop of three-plus miles.

We saw four other people in something less than two hours of hiking, while there must have been 150 people hiking the Tradition Lake Plateau just across I-90.

"You've discovered the magic of Grand Ridge," Kimmett said later.

The list goes on: Three Forks Natural Area at the base of towering Mount Si near Snoqualmie; Preston Mill Park, a historic sawmill site the community of Preston is turning into a park; Ring Hill Forest, a working forest with trails near Duvall; Carnation Marsh, a wetlands area in the Snoqualmie Valley rampant with woodpeckers, hawks, wrens, herons and other birds.

These lands have been acquired with various funding sources. These include parks levies and bonds, a real estate excise tax called the Conservation Futures Tax, federal flood relief and salmon restoration funding, state recreation funds and county policies that allow developers to push urban growth boundaries if they acquire adjacent undeveloped lands as public open space.

Over several weeks I explored many of these places on my own, with Kimmett, and during a horseback ride with members of the Sammamish Saddle Club who are concerned about Soaring Eagle Park.

What's amazing is the sheer number and total acreage of these new parks and open spaces.

"When you look at how scattered these areas are, it's like taking Tiger Mountain State Forest and scattering that all over the county and trying to manage it," Kimmett says. "It's a challenge."

It's actually like taking four or five Tiger Mountain State Forests and scattering them all over.

The challenges include dealing with camps made by homeless people, illegal dumping, cedar poaching and vandalism. On Grand Ridge -- less than a mile from new homes selling for $1 million and more -- we found three garbage-strewn camps made by the homeless. At Preston Ridge, Kimmett showed us the stumps of two large red cedars that had been illegally felled.

But these places also offer a huge variety of recreation.

At Chinook Bend, Kimmett and I met angler Bob de Boer as he pulled on his hip boots in late February near the end of the winter steelhead season. His family has roots as dairy farmers in the Snoqualmie Valley near Carnation.

"I caught my first steelhead just below that bridge," he said, pointing at the nearby Carnation Road Bridge. "This bend is great water. There are some great drifts here. At this time of year with the natives (steelhead) coming in, there's some great holding water about halfway."

The land once was pasture and a staging area for the old Carnation dairy farm. The county is now replanting native willows and alders on the area that the river wraps around.

"Over time, (more) people will find this place," Kimmett said. "The gravel bar here is so cool. I was out here once and ran into an artist who had his easel set up. Turned out he was Norm Lundin, a University of Washington. He said 'I've been coming here for years. I've been painting this gravel bar for years.' "

Our ride at Soaring Eagle was organized by Sammamish Saddle Club member Lee Moderow, who owns a ranch that shares a border with the park off the Redmond-Fall City Road.

She said the effort to acquire 30 acres of the park by Sammamish, one of the fastest growing cities in the Northwest, sets a bad precedent.

"It's a little bit of a political football, as these cities expand and put more and more pressure on land with development and growth," she said. "The park is viewed as sort of low-hanging fruit -- this nice, cheap land to take up the slack for things they never planned for."

The park was purchased by the county from the state in 1995 for $8 million and is still home to deer, bear and bobcat.

"It's sort of our little treasure in our backyard," said Glen Rolfe, a mountain biker we met on the trail who lives in Sammamish. "It always amazes me how many people use these trails."

Soaring Eagle illustrates a process that is likely to be repeated as growth puts pressure on other county parcels. Over time the public will discover these lands and decisions will be made about how they are managed and used.

"We firmly believe that recreational opportunity and diversity is directly related to public health," says Jennifer Harrison-Cox of Issaquah, active with the group Partnership for Rural King County, which is trying to protect and increase these public lands.

"Soaring Eagle is just indicative of the pressure that's coming from these little cities -- Carnation, Duvall, even Sammamish. They're kind of bursting at the seams to expand and it's putting pressure on our rural areas. We're at a crossroads right now."

While these lands already offer a host of recreation, more and more open space is being acquired every year. Earlier this month the county acquired a 20.4-acre mobile home park prone to flooding along the Cedar River near Maple Valley; it will be restored as a natural flood plain. And the county's goal is to preserve 200,000 acres of parks and open space, either through outright acquisition or through conservation easements such as one worked out on Hancock Timber Resource Group's 90,000-acre Snoqualmie Tree Farm.

"It's about providing for the quality of life and recreational opportunities for the public," says Bob Burns, deputy director of the county Natural Resources and Parks Department. "It's about preserving habitat for fish and wildlife, protecting ecological values and providing recreational opportunities for the public. Absolutely we want the public to use these lands. We encourage folks to use those lands that aren't ecologically sensitive."

Resources

To find out more about the 25,000 acres of parks and open space managed by the King County Department of Natural Resources and Parks, browse its Web page at metrokc.gov/parks. The county also has produced a brochure and map on its trails network and public lands, called "Regional Trails in King County." The brochure is being updated and supplies are limited, but while they last you can get one by calling 206-296-8687.

Many citizen groups are active in efforts to plan and manage these public lands, including Partnership for Rural King County (prkc.org) and Friends of Soaring Eagle Park friendsofsoaringeaglepark.org.

Two groups active in trail construction and maintenance on many of these lands are the Washington Trails Association (wta.org) and the Backcountry Bicycle Trails Club (bbtc.org). They welcome your comments and help.