Coal Creek & Red Town Meadow Trails — Issaquah Alps
- Lea Fetterman
- Mar 8, 2023
- 2 min read
Updated: Mar 13, 2023
One of my goals this year is to get out hiking more frequently, even if it is not a long drive or jaunt out of the city. Coal Creek and Cougar Mountain natural areas make this much more attainable! My friend and I started our hike from the Coal Creek trailhead at around 8:15am. The parking lot was empty and the porta-potties were recently cleaned and pleasant to use.
Parts of the trail were quite muddy, but nothing some sturdy waterproof/resistant shoes could not handle. We branched off to the left and took the Primrose trail, which follows the creek and was very enjoyable. Not many people were out this early, so it was nice to have this popular walk to ourselves. There is a lot of history here, and plaques along the way describe the coal mining in this area back in the 19th century which I really enjoyed learning about.
Crossing the road to the Red Town trailhead, we continued on to the Cave Hole trail which branches off from the Red Town trail. We enjoyed a snack at Coal Creek Falls, which was flowing heavily! When we reached the Quarry trail, we took a right to head back to the Red Town trail and made our trek into a loop. There was a WTA work-party out on this stretch of trail, so we offered our gratitude!
We took the Coal Creek trail all the way back, which eventually started to hurt my feet because it is gravel a lot of the time. I preferred the Primrose trail. There used to be a farm up on top of the ravine, but now this land has become an incessant breeding ground for all manner of invasive blackberries, scotch broom, ivy, and holly. This would be an excellent place for restoration work, because it would make the park a lot more enjoyable, be better for the native species trying to recover from human interference, and would help with carbon sequestration.
Please sign the petition to Save Coal Creek: https://www.issaquahalps.org/save-coal-creek-petition
We got back to the cars around 12:30pm, at 8.44 miles. This route is certainly not the only way to do this hike! I used my Gaia App to plot out the trails I wanted to take ahead of time because there are so many trails that connect in this area. I tend to get overwhelmed in these situations, but going in with a plan really helped me enjoy this hike since it was my first time exploring this area.
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