Hiking & Biking

Trail of the Month: Ellis Cove

Wed, 28 Nov 2012 08:00:00 -0800

Difficulty Easy
Distance 2.5 miles

Much has changed on Budd Inlet since Father Pascal Ricard built his mission on Ellis Cove in south Puget Sound in 1848—including the heretofore nonexistent city of Olympia, which now occupies the nearby shoreline. Yet the 300-acre Olympia city park named Priest Point for Father Ricard still looks the way it did in the 1800s. And the Ellis Cove trail is a great introduction to the century-old forest and undeveloped coastline of the park. Drop into a deep ravine and turn right at a junction. Round Ellis Cove on a big boardwalk and come to another junction—this one marked with a mossy carved-bear sign.

Continue left to the beach on Ellis Cove. Explore it or carry on—climbing up a bluff and staying left at the next junction. Meander through forest, passing more junctions to shortcuts and beach access, and continue on the Ellis Cove Trail, eventually returning to the bear sign junction.

Watch for The wooden bear sculpture climbing a towering fir

Getting there From Seattle, follow I-5 south to Olympia taking Exit 105B to Plum St. Continue north to East Bay Dr. Follow East Bay Dr for 1.5 miles, turning right into Priest Point Park. Proceed 0.2 miles and turn left, crossing a bridge and reaching a parking lot and trailhead shortly afterward.

Trail of the Month is written by Craig Romano, the author of eight hiking books, including Winter Hikes of Western Washington (Mountaineers Books).

Trail of the Month: Mount Finlayson

Mon, 08 Oct 2012 16:20:00 -0700

Image: Craig Romano

Difficulty Easy
Distance 3.5 miles

The longest stretch of public beach in the San Juans is a spoil of the Pig War, a confrontation in 1859 between the U.S. and Great Britain over the possession of San Juan Island. Fortunately, the only casualty was a British hog. But we ended up with a 1,750-acre national park commemorating the event and protecting stunning coastline. Follow the trail across golden grassland lined with windblown, contorted firs up Mount Finlayson, the long, low ridge named for one of Victoria, British Columbia’s founders. At 1.4 miles, crest the 290-foot summit and take in views of the Cattle Point lighthouse, the Strait of Juan de Fuca, and the Olympic Mountains. Then head down a short side trail into a cool ravine, turning left to follow a dirt road back to the trailhead.

Watch for The undeveloped coastline, which sometimes teems with eagles and whales.
Getting there From Seattle, take I-5 north to SR 20 in Burlington. Head west to Anacortes and take the state ferry to Friday Harbor on San Juan Island. Follow Spring St through town turning left on Mullis St (becomes Cattle Point Rd). Reach trailhead (signed for “Jakle’s Lagoon”) in 6.7 miles.

Craig Romano is the author of eight hiking books, including Day Hiking North Cascades (Mountaineers Books).

Trails to Hike in Mount Rainier National Park

Thu, 19 Jul 2012 05:00:00 -0700

TRAILS EVERYONE LOVES

Burroughs Mountain
Above the trees and in the tundra, these ridges resemble a moonscape. Besides the First, Second, and Third Burroughs mountains, hikers can sometimes see avalanches on Rainier’s flanks. The catcalls coming from the rocks? They’re marmot whistles. 7 Miles SUNRISE

Grove of the Patriarchs
The granddaddy of interpretive trails is a gentle saunter through a patch of hemlocks, cedars, and Douglas firs as ancient as 1,000 years old. The old dudes are so big—some are 50 feet in diameter—and can be viewed from a boardwalk trail that starts just past a not-too-swingy suspension bridge. 1.1 Miles NEAR OHANAPECOSH

Rampart Ridge
Among the first trail loops to be snow free, this ridge offers the best seat in the house when the mountain is out. Switchback up to an overlook of Longmire, then look for a rocky clearing about a half mile later—it’s like a booster seat to a Rainier panorama. 4.6 Miles LONGMIRE

Skyline Trail/Panorama Point
The start of this uphill slog is paved, all the better to preserve the lush subalpine meadows. Climbers heading to Camp Muir will share the trail until the day hikers curve up some 1,500 feet above Paradise, then down past waterfalls at the end of the loop. The views of the craggy Tatoosh Range are spectacular from Panorama Point, but so is the fact that there’s a remote solar-powered bathroom built into the mountain. 5.5 Miles PARADISE

Naches Peak Loop
One of the few to straddle the National Park boundary, this trail winds around Highway 410 to Yakima. The moderately strenuous loop provides killer mountain views when done clockwise, and huckleberry bushes are heavy with fruit in late summer. 3.4 Miles CHINOOK PASS

TRAILS NO ONE ELSE IS DOING

Cowlitz Divide
A lack of vistas, meadows, and lakes leads most hikers to overlook this route. But the primeval forest is grand, perfect for quiet contemplation and sighting wild critters. Pitch a tent at Olallie Creek for a night under the ancient forest canopy. 8.6 Miles NEAR OHANAPECOSH

Eagle Peak
This 2,955-foot climb is more intimidating than the popular Pinnacle Peak, another snowy summit in the serrated Tatoosh Range south of Paradise. But the grade is moderate to this saddle, and it offers a dizzying overlook of the Nisqually Valley with in-your-face views of the mountain. 7.2 Miles LONGMIRE

Forest Lake
Deer and marmots are usually the only company at this placid little alpine lake, cradled in a remote basin beneath the rocky cliffs of Mount Fremont. The 1,200-foot drop from Sourdough Ridge keeps the crowds away. 5.2 Miles SUNRISE

Silver Forest Trail
Most hikers flock toward the mountain, but this near-level trail meanders east from Sunrise. The sun-bleached branches are bare because of a long-ago fire, but the ghost forest is now carpeted with wildflowers. Across the deep White River Valley is an excellent view of the Emmons Glacier. 1.6 Miles SUNRISE

Tahoma Creek Trail
Walk the washed-out Westside Road to a trail also prone to rinsing away (and it’s not officially maintained). Traverse gravelly outwash along the cloudy Tahoma Creek—the glaciers make it that color—before heading up a steep hillside. Where the route joins the Wonderland Trail, an airy suspension bridge spans the creek. 6.5 Miles WESTSIDE ROAD

Trail of the Month: Saddle Rock

Tue, 17 Jul 2012 05:00:00 -0700

TRAIL NAME Saddle Mountain
DIFFICULTY Moderate
DISTANCE 3 miles round trip

This hike on Saddle Mountain, the prominent and iconic Wenatchee Foothills peak that looms above Wenatchee, is short, steep, and—thanks to scented sage—a tad sweet. Follow an old jeep track 1.5 miles and 900 vertical feet to the craggy 2,000-foot landmark.

After that lung-busting ascent, look beyond the slopes to the sweeping vistas. Face west to see rows of evergreen-draped ridges and snowcapped peaks; to the east are the basaltic canyons and shrub-steppe Columbia Plateau. To the north and south is the Columbia River, here cutting its deep gorge through one of the most dramatic transition zones in the Pacific Northwest, where coastal mountains and forests converge with interior arid plateaus.

On the descent, you won’t get saddle sores, but your knees may knock, so bring your trekking poles.

WATCH FOR Old mines dot the surrounding hills; look for shafts, tailings, and other relics.

GETTING THERE From U.S. 2 in Wenatchee, turn south onto State Route 285 (Wenatchee Ave). After 2 miles, turn right onto Miller St. Continue for 3.2 miles and turn right onto Circle St; in 0.3 mile arrive at the trailhead and parking area near the Appleatchee Riders equestrian center.

TIME FROM SEATTLE
2 hours, 40 minutes

Craig Romano is the author of eight hiking books, including Day Hiking Olympic Peninsula (Mountaineers Books).

Trail of the Month: Mount Townsend

Wed, 20 Jun 2012 05:00:00 -0700

Image: Craig Romano

TRAIL NAME Mount Townsend
DIFFICULTY High
DISTANCE 8.2 miles

From the windswept peak of Mount Townsend, at the northeastern edge of the Olympic Peninsula, you can see the Salish Sea—it fills your viewfinder from this 6,280-foot summit. The scene is rife with emerald islands, expansive straits, and a labyrinth of bays and channels plied by ferries and other watercraft. Marvel at the Seattle skyline shimmering across Puget Sound, then turn westward and be awed again by a fortress of snowy and craggy cloud-piercing Olympic peaks.

The mountain, in the Buckhorn Wilderness and Olympic rain shadow, melts out early, so hikers get a jump start on exploring the high country. The well-worn trail begins in groves  of ancient conifers adorned with rhododendrons. Two dozen switchbacks direct you upward across cascading creeks and meadows of wildflowers. The final pitch to Townsend’s broad summit traverses alpine tundra carpeted with ground-hugging juniper and clumps of cinquefoil and phlox. If the 2,900 feet of elevation gain doesn’t slow you down, the flowers and horizon-spanning scenery will.

WATCH FOR Piper’s bellflower, an Olympic endemic. This purple flower is profuse on Mount Townsend.
GETTING THERE Take the Edmonds–Kingston Ferry and follow State Route 104 West to U.S. 101, turning south to Quilcene. Continue south for another 1.5 miles and turn right (west) onto Penny Creek Rd. After 1.5 miles, bear left onto Big Quilcene River Rd (Forest Rd 27). Take this road for 15 miles turning left onto Forest Rd 27-190. In 1.3 miles, reach the trailhead.
TIME FROM SEATTLE 2 hours (includes 30 minute ferry)

Craig Romano is the author of eight hiking books, including Day Hiking Olympic Peninsula (Mountaineers Books).

Bicycle Trips, Trails, and Gear

Fri, 18 May 2012 05:00:00 -0700

Image: Kyle Johnson

Seattle shouldn’t be a bicycle town. It’s hilly, it’s wet, and we’re all weak-limbed brainiacs or antiathletic hipsters…right?

And yet the Emerald City is one of the top-ranked cycle cities in the nation, thanks to our committed commuters and twisting trails. Turns out that we love our bikes, and the number of pedal pushers grows with every year (and every bump in gas prices).

With that in mind, we explored the best two-wheeled travel in the Northwest.

Bike Routes: On the Pavement

Washington Bike Towns

Group Bike Rides

Bike Routes: Off Road

Bike Gear: Head to Toe

How to Buy a Bike

Pedal Pushers

Bike Crashes Along SLU Streetcar Pit Cyclists Against City

Bike Gear: Head to Toe

Fri, 18 May 2012 05:00:00 -0700

Helmet
Fox Transition Helmet, $35
“Fox Transition helmets are flying out the door right now. They are great for just knocking around the city and they don’t have a lot of those crazy vents on them, so they look pretty stylish. They come in all sorts of colors: matte black, military green, light green, silver, and blue.”

—Robert Watson, Sales Associate and Bike Builder at Velo, Capitol Hill, velobikeshop.com

Gloves
Specialized Body -Geometry Sport Gloves, $20–$25
“These gloves don’t use a ton of padding so they don’t feel so thick underneath your hands.”  —Tony Devita, Sales Manager at Gregg’s Cycles, Greenlake, greggscycles.com

Glasses
Tifosi Vogel Fototec Photochromic Sunglasses, $70
“The lenses are photo-chromic, so they adjust to different levels of sunlight. The Vogel style is just one large lens instead of two individual lenses, so aggressive cyclists won’t have their vision obscured by the middle piece.” —Vinh Do, Optics Salesperson at REI, South Lake Union, rei.com

Shirt
Pearl Izumi Elite LTD Short Sleeve Jersey, $99
“It’s a fitted jersey with pockets on the back to store nutrition or water. This is the jersey for riders who want to do some hard riding, like they’re going to sweat and they want optimal breathability.” —Josh Clifford, Store Manager at Performance Bicycle, University District, performancebike.com

Pants
Endura Zyme Shorts, $89
“You can wear a shammy [underneath] so you don’t look like you’re a member of the Lycra brigade, but you’re still comfortable on your bike ride. They’re cool because you can just get off your bike and grab a beer and people aren’t staring at you.” —James Wiker, Sales Manager at BikeSport, 5601 24th Ave NW, Ballard, ilovemybike.com

Bag
The Sac by Linus Bikes, $65
“For summer I would say the Sac. This tote/sac is a pannier. It hangs on the back rack but also comes with a shoulder strap as well as short handles.” —Juliette Delfs, Owner of Hub and Bespoke, Fremont, hubandbespoke.com

Socks
SmartWool Cycling Socks, $13–$16
“A lot of people think that wool is only for cold weather, but it actually does a great job of cooling and it’s great for warm weather. For a lot of people it provides less resistance in their shoes, so they experience fewer blisters in wool socks than in technical socks.” —Brook -Sillers, Owner of Speedy Reedy, Fremont, speedyreedy.com

Shoes
Giro Prolight SLX Shoes, $350
“The Giro Prolight SLXis incredibly light and fits like a slipper. It has a microfiber upper portion that isn’t leather, but it’s a very supple material. Once you break them in they basically are slippers.”

—Aaron Grant, Bicycle Fit -Specialist and Assistant Manager at Kirkland Bicycle, Kirkland, kirklandbikes.com

Pedal Pushers

Fri, 18 May 2012 05:00:00 -0700

Image: Joel Kimmel

Colin Stevens
Bike Welder
They call him Haulin’ Colin. In his Georgetown shop of that name, artist Colin Stevens fabricates bike trailers, tricked-out pedicabs, bike racks, and bike-powered floats. His workshop is “the place where people go when they have weird bike ideas,” he says. They’ve included a seven seater built on the frame of a 1984 Toyota pickup and a triple-decker bike, which he deemed “too scary” for practical use after a ride around the block.

Stevens began to hone his mechanical skills at the Bike Shack, a donation-only shop in Roosevelt, then moved to Central District bike shop 20/20 and began dabbling in customized bike trailers. In the five years since starting Haulin’ Colin, he’s been able to turn his hobby into a full-time gig. Stevens sees his biking clientele as separate from the commuter and leisure cycling communities, using their bikes for all aspects of their lives and eschewing specialized apparel—he calls his eco-friendly cohort “utilitarian cyclists.” One customer, the president of the Puget Sound Beekeepers Association, wants to transport his honeymakers on his own two wheels; another hopes to perform an interstate move by bike, a haul that impresses even Haulin’ Colin. —Jessie Wesley

Adonia Lugo
Minority Bike Activist
Imagine shutting down one of Seattle’s main avenues to car traffic for a single day—now imagine it’s a South End drag like Rainier Avenue or Martin Luther King Jr. Way. Adonia Lugo wants to see it happen; she’s a self-described “bike anthropologist,” an activist who’s writing her PhD dissertation on the interaction of race, segregation, and transportation.

Before her move to Seattle last year, Lugo helped start two projects aimed at expanding the bike movement to include more minorities and low-income citizens in Los Angeles; one, CicLaVia, organized car-free days. The cycling movement lacks support in the diverse communities of the South End, she says, and cycle-only roadways would spur interest. For now, she’s focusing on data collection by partnering with Bicycle Alliance of Washington and Bike Works for the Seattle Bike Justice Project. She calls its mission to “find out about how bicycling, especially in this part of Seattle, is associated with disempowerment.”  —JW

Christy Elton
Blogging Commuter
When she commutes, video editor Christy Elton hauls more than her lunchbox—as she has ever since she put her three-year-old son, Parker, on the handlebars of her 1995 Diamondback Wildwood. After joining the league of Seattle’s 8,000 or so bike commuters, the South Lake Union mom started a blog, Stylen’ Cycle Mom (stylencycle.blogspot.com), about riding with a kid. After eight weeks of smooth riding, Elton sold her car. Besides using buses and Zipcars in bad weather, she sticks to her four-mile work ride.

Elton’s online missives are about the low-key issues of family cycling—when to battle elements for daily exercise, how to best tote a toddler, and what it takes to carry the ingredients for potato leek soup on two wheels. As a relative newcomer to biking, Elton hopes her blog encourages other novice bikers to ditch their cars since “someone else is muddling through it…and you don’t have to be perfect to ride a bike.” You’re far more likely to stop by a farmers market or a park when you’re on a bike, she says: “You get a little more whimsical, and that’s what’s been really special.” —Anne Larkin

Image: Joel Kimmel

Brian Nordwall
Electric Bike Entrepreneur
E-bike evangelical Brian Nordwall sums up the battery-powered cycles in two words: “hill flatteners.” Unlike an old Huffy, e-bikes have the ability to move completely on their own—about 25 miles before a recharge—but can still be pedaled unassisted like a regular bike. Most cyclists use a combination of the two, harnessing some of the 500 watts of power to reach speeds of 20 miles per hour. At 100 percent assistance (that is, without pedaling), Nordwall says his cycles can ascend a 10 percent grade—like Queen Anne Avenue.

The semiretired real estate lawyer created the shop after falling in love with the battery-powered bikes and visiting Florida-based manufacturer Prodeco. He quickly secured the rights to the line’s Northwest retail operation and opened the Seattle E-Bike store in Pioneer Square in January.

Besides saving on sweat, e-bikes make roads safer, says Nordwall; they open Seattle’s hilly terrain to more people, which accustoms drivers to seeing two-wheelers wherever they go. “The more bikes there are on the road, the lower the percentage of collisions,” he says. Nordwall notes that in the Netherlands and Denmark, “the most bike-friendly countries in the world,” about a third of all bikes sold are electric—his goal is to add 1,000 e-bikes to the streets every month, making this “an e-bike town.” Since its opening, the store is selling about 30 a month, but Nordwall notes that it still helps: “Every bike on the road, whether an electric bike or $7,000 carbon fiber model, adds to everybody’s safety.” —Emily Dhatt

Image: Joel Kimmel

David Postetter
Accident Victim
“The last thing I remember is seeing the hood of the car as I flew over it,” says 25-year-old David Postetter. He’s talking about a triathlon in July 2010, when a car turned in front of a trio of racers, causing Postetter to strike it while he was moving at 20 miles per hour. He woke up covered in gravel, glass, and blood, but still thought about finishing the race. That didn’t happen, because after he had flown over the car, Postetter smashed the rear window of a parked minivan, and something—what, he doesn’t know for sure—severed 80 percent of his calf muscle, an injury that required three surgeries and kept him off his bike for six months.

A year later, though, Postetter was racing again. And the car that he says caused the collision? “I like to think that if it had been me, I would’ve noticed three bikers and a race going on,” he says of the driver who failed to use a turn signal. Despite the testimony of nearby drivers, the police declared the accident a no-fault incident (the driver’s insurance company did issue a payout to Postetter, but it covered less than half of his medical bills). This is not unique; most drivers involved in car-on-bike collisions are never cited, and Washington State’s Department of Transportation reports that, in the last decade, 34 percent of all bike-related collisions—and fully half of cyclist fatalities—occurred when cyclists were “riding with traffic.” Postetter, who hopes to compete in USA Triathlon nationals, is now much more cautious and says, “Treat every car as if they don’t see you.” —Brian Colella

Patricia Hansen
Long-Haul Activist
It took almost 70 years, but Patricia Hansen is finally taking the cross-country ride of a lifetime. She’s prepared physically for a 3,500-mile roll, since she and her partner Bill Leach “are in such good shape; younger people can’t keep up with us.”

Hansen has been busy running Emerald City Lights Bike Ride, a nonprofit organization she started in 2005 with Leach; it puts on two local outings per year (the next will be September 8). Like many group rides, it raises money; Hansen’s cause of choice is hunger in the Pacific Northwest, and her “four-day food boxes”—they include Hansen’s own homemade jam—have been delivered to more than 1,000 local families.

Hansen departed the West Coast on April Fool’s Day, on a 97-day route that includes stops in nine states, from Oregon to Virginia. She’s funding the whole ride herself and will sleep most nights in a Ford Econoline van; on off days she hopes to participate in fundraising events in towns she passes. So far, pledge donations raised by the trip have raked in more than any of her Seattle bike events did—she uses pledges to deliver food to needy families along her path. When she arrives in Yorktown, Virginia, on July 7, her 70th birthday, she hopes to have achieved her real goal: to raise enough dough to feed a hungry family for a year.—BC

Favorite Gear Hansen’s Topeak multitool dates back to the ’90s: “I could not be without it.”
Try: Topeak Hexus 16II, $25, Angle Lake Cyclery, anglelakecycle.com

Group Bike Rides

Fri, 18 May 2012 05:00:00 -0700

Image: Rob Sumner/Red Box Pictures

Mass Effect: Cascade Bicycle Club’s F5 Bike to Work Day.

Cascade Bike Club
Boasting more than 14,000 members, it’s the country’s largest cycling club and schedules rides on virtually every day of the year. The 42-year-old society runs the Seattle to Portland Bicycle Classic and the largest consumer bicycle expo in the U.S., as well as a bike swap with over 100 vendors. 206-522-2453; cascade.org

Cyclists of Greater Seattle
COGS members number roughly 120 and cover a range of skill levels, with moderate and brisk Wednesday-evening rides kicking off at Gas Works and ending with social gatherings. Members-only weekend getaways take riders on tours of scenic spots like the Columbia River Gorge or the San Juan Islands, but this troop is all about hanging with fellow gear heads, hosting club picnics, potlucks, dinners, and holiday parties. cyclistsofgreaterseattle.org, rides@cyclistsofgreaterseattle.org

Native Planet Cycling
With a focus on rolling up hills, this club is in the right corner of the country. Native Planet cyclists see the best scenery from on high, though alternate route options exist for anyone with less-than-bionic quads. The club is organized as a 63-member Facebook group but welcomes all friendly pedalers.  facebook.com/groups/nativeplanetcycling

Outdoors for All
Not a strictly bicycling group, Outdoors for All’s mission is to bring recreation to people with disabilities. The club rents hand-powered cycles, tri- and quadcycles, and other adaptive cycles to the general public. An annual membership for the cycling team is $85, which gets you a jersey, training rides, event registration, and the option to join the crew on the Seattle to Portland ride.  206-838-6030 ext 200; outdoorsforall.org

Bike Crashes Along SLU Streetcar Pit Cyclists Against City

Fri, 18 May 2012 05:00:00 -0700

Image: Andy Reynolds

The streetcar was coming and Amanda Currier had a decision to make.

Just seconds earlier, at a little past 1pm on June 15, 2009, she’d left work on her bike and started pedaling north along Westlake Avenue to her Queen Anne apartment. It was an unseasonably cool day—low 60s—in an unusually cool summer, but at least it wasn’t raining. Wet roads always made the 20-minute commute through traffic that much trickier.

It was Currier’s first time riding this direction on Westlake since the South Lake Union Streetcar began running—she was trying out a new route—and as soon as her tires hit the street just north of Pacific Place, she was pinched in a sort of urban cycling no-man’s-land: Along the curb to her right was a line of parallel-parked cars, and to her left were the streetcar tracks. Edge too far to the right and she risked slamming headlong into a suddenly opened car door. Scooch too far in the other direction and she could be clipped from behind by an oncoming trolley.

Things got dicey for her quickly that afternoon. Two blocks back the streetcar was leaving the Westlake station, accelerating to 25 miles an hour. And one block ahead Currier could see that the sliver of asphalt she had to navigate was about to get slimmer still. Her options were few and the time she had to weigh them was short. Seventh Avenue, which she could use to cut west to Dexter, was just ahead, so she looked over her shoulder, signaled to give drivers a heads up that she was changing lanes to turn, and banked left.

But she never made it out of the right lane. As Currier began to cross the streetcar tracks, her front wheel dropped into one of the channels and wedged itself there, bringing the bike to a sudden, violent stop—as if an invisible hand had grabbed it from behind—and catapulting her over the handlebars and onto the pavement. The sound of screeching car tires cut through the din of midday traffic as a taxi traveling the other direction on Westlake slammed to a stop in front of her. The streetcar was still coming, though, and as Currier sat dazed in the middle of the tracks, the cab’s driver and two pedestrians ran to help her. Together, the three Samaritans scooped her up and rushed her to the sidewalk just as the streetcar whipped past.

Almost one year later, in late May 2010, Currier and five other cyclists—Patricia Lenssen, Joseph Pomerleau, Emma Levitt, Jason Dean, and Laura Humiston—sued the City of Seattle. Each had wrecked somewhere along the South Lake Union Streetcar line, and all had sustained serious, though not life-threatening, injuries: broken jaws, broken arms, broken teeth. Among other things, they alleged that the City had “breached its duty to keep its streets in a reasonably safe condition for bicycle traffic” by placing streetcar tracks in the road. On the surface it was a classic case of tort law run amuck, the two-wheeled equivalent of suing because your coffee was too hot. But the plaintiffs’ argument went beyond “We got hurt and someone needs to pay”: They had evidence that the City’s engineers actually expected cyclists to eat concrete and did nothing to stop it.

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“Come here.” Bob Anderton waved me over to one of the picture windows in his 10th-floor office in Pioneer Square, where he was looking down at the bike lane that runs along the east side of Second Avenue. “If we stand here long enough, we’ll probably see someone get hit.” (We didn’t. Thankfully.) Anderton is the personal injury attorney representing the six cyclists who were injured along the South Lake Union tracks. He’s an avid rider himself, and for the last 20 years he’s focused on bicycle-accident cases, but the more garden variety types: cyclists who get clipped by cars, cyclists who get “doored” by passengers exiting parked cars, that sort of thing.

And those cases—many of which start on the street right outside his building—are typically about money, helping the biker recoup medical costs or fight insurance companies. The day in mid-April when we spoke, he was debating whether to file suit on behalf of a man who was struck in the bike lane on Second by a car that turned into him in an intersection. The cyclist had the right of way and knew the car was coming up from behind—even blew a whistle to make his presence known—but the car plowed into him anyway. Adding insult to injury, the cyclist received a ticket for "inattention," even though an independent witness heard the whistle. “I can’t imagine more clear liability, but the driver’s insurance company was like, ‘Nope,’ ” Anderton said, rolling his eyes and shaking his head. “So this is what we’re up against.”

He says the situation in South Lake Union is different, though. “The reason we took this case is that we thought the city should act consistent with its rhetoric,” Anderton says. “Everybody thinks that Seattle’s super pro-bike, but then they did this.”

Planning for the streetcar, a pet project of then-mayor Greg Nickels, began in 2004. The line would run 1.3 miles, connecting Westlake Center to the burgeoning South Lake Union neighborhood. And virtually from the beginning Seattle Department of Transportation engineers, along with consultants from engineering and construction megafirm Parsons Brinckerhoff, decided against laying the tracks down the middle of Westlake—which would have been the more traditional alignment—in favor of placing them in the right-hand lanes in both directions. The city’s attorneys have since explained that the driving force behind that decision was, naturally, money: Underground utility lines would have had to be moved to accommodate a center-running line, and everyone involved, including major funder Vulcan, wanted to fast-track the $56 million project. (It’s worth noting, though, that at the time the project’s manager told The Seattle Times that SDOT didn’t put the tracks in the middle of the street because the city would have had to eliminate parking spaces.)

But for bike commuters from the north end of the city who preferred that route into and out of downtown because of its relative flatness, the decision to place the lines on the right was akin to creating a 1.3-mile booby trap. Not only would cyclists, typically expected to ride in the right lane, be squeezed into a narrow space between the streetcar and parked cars, but the channel between each rail and the concrete—called a flangeway gap—was also just wide enough to catch a road bike tire. In other words, the slightest swerve could result in an over-the-handlebars, bone-snapping wreck. Tom Fucoloro, a bike commuter and the founder of the influential Seattle Bike Blog says he avoids Westlake “at all costs” specifically because of the hazard. “You ride over gaps and bumps all day long, so people like to say that riders who crash on the tracks are just being stupid,” he says. “But it’s completely reasonable if you’ve never seen anyone crash there to think that you can just ride over them like you ride over everything else.”

Her front wheel dropped into one of the channels and wedged itself there, bringing the bike to a sudden, violent stop and catapulting her over the handlebars and onto the pavement.

The streetcar line began ding-dinging its way up and down Westlake in December 2007, but its tracks started tossing cyclists while the project was still under construction. Patricia Lenssen, one of the plaintiffs in the South Lake Union lawsuit, broke her jaw and two front teeth the previous May, when she got caught in the tracks while trying to turn from Westlake onto John Street. And in the months before the line was completed cyclists bit it on the freshly laid tracks so often that a throng of protesters crashed the streetcar’s unveiling on December 12—not just to rail against the City’s apparent disregard for rider safety, but to alert everyone to the hazard. Lenssen was there holding a sign that read “Watch for Injured Cyclists.”

Certainly some of the early wrecks could be attributed to the newness of the tracks and the fact that many riders just didn’t know they were there. But even with the warning signs that SDOT has since installed along Westlake and an acute awareness of the danger that’s spread throughout the biking community, the flangeway gap still snags tires regularly. Cyclists self-report accidents from across Seattle at bikewise.org, dropping virtual blue pins on a Google map of the city to designate solo crashes; Westlake, from Fifth Avenue to Mercer Street, is a solid blue line. One of the most recent reports is from a rider named Tim, who wiped out on April 3, not far from where Amanda Currier was thrown from her bike. “Was riding along Westlake and my back tire was caught in the trolly [sic] tracks,” wrote Tim, who described himself as an advanced cyclist. “There is very little room for error next to the trolly stops….”

After agreeing to take the case, Anderton filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the City, seeking any and all documents related to the streetcar’s planning. He hoped to find evidence of negligence but resigned himself to the possibility of finding that SDOT had actually exhausted every option for mitigating the danger to cyclists. What he discovered, though, shocked him. In March 2005, a technical report submitted to SDOT by Parsons Brinckerhoff noted that the danger presented by placing the tracks in the right lane would be so great that “cyclists will be required to use alternate routes.” One year later a city engineer sent an email to the project’s coordinator, among others, stating, “falls by cyclists are highly foreseeable. We see this as an issue of safety and liability.”

In fact the issue of potential liability was so widely acknowledged and of such concern within SDOT that throughout the entire design process the department’s engineers planned to restrict bicycle travel along the streetcar’s route. “Installation of track in Westlake Avenue will eliminate the street as a bike route,” read one set of planning comments distributed in February ’05. “To keep cyclists away from the tracks, the street would probably be signed ‘No Bikes.’ ”

Yet somewhere along the way—presumably shortly before the tracks were laid, but even SDOT employees say they’re not sure—talk of prohibiting bikes on Westlake just stopped and without any real explanation. From the City’s perspective, it would be business as usual for bikes in South Lake Union. Signs warning cyclists of the danger didn’t even start going in until December 2007.

But still. Rider beware, right? You could argue that cyclists brave enough to ride on city streets—in traffic, no less—know they’ll have to contend with hazards every day. Wrecking on the tracks is no different than wrecking on a pothole. But Anderton doesn’t buy that. “I’ve crashed on a pothole on City of Seattle streets—that’s an issue where the City has a limited amount of money and lots of streets to maintain,” he says. “But with the streetcar, they affirmatively and knowingly created the danger. This isn’t something that just snuck up on them. They knew about it. And they chose to let people crash on it.”

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Reaction to the lawsuit was harsh. “What a bunch of a—hats,” wrote one reader on seattlepi.com. “The entire world does not have to be made safe for bikes. Get over your selves.” Wrote another: “My first reaction when I saw this article was, these people are too brain dead to be allowed outside the house without adult supervision.” Hundreds more weighed in, there and at The Seattle Times site, most with similar sentiments. The online name-calling got so nasty that two weeks after suing the City, Anderton filed a motion to have the case moved to Kent, where he hoped to find a less biased jury. The court denied his request. He had anticipated the backlash—he knew before suing that he’d probably have to ask for a transfer—but he says his clients hadn’t. All of them declined to comment for this story through Anderton; he says they just don’t want to put themselves out there again and invite more name-calling and invective.

The less said about the vitriol-spewing trolls who hang out in the comments section of the local news sites, the better. But their spiteful, nasty shots at the plaintiffs provided a window onto tension that’s grown for years between those who don’t ride bikes and those who do. For the most part, the conflict has manifested itself in honked horns, raised middle fingers, and incendiary rhetoric. In January 2010, David Hiller, then the advocacy director of the Cascade Bicycle Club and now a transportation advisor to Mayor Mike McGinn, infamously told The Stranger he’d love to hang drivers who hit cyclists “by their toenails at the edge of town and paint ‘Killer’ across their chest and let them hang there until the buzzards peck their eyes out.”

But it’s a political issue, too. Mayor McGinn, who courted and won the progressive vote in 2009 in part by wearing buttons emblazoned with the slogan “Mike Bikes,” has been the target of antibike scorn ever since. Last November, when he presented to voters Proposition 1, a $60 car-tab fee that would have raised more than $200 million for transportation infrastructure, critics screamed about the comparatively tiny portion—$14 million—that would have gone toward striping bike lanes and building neighborhood greenways. And its subsequent thumping at the polls was hailed as not just a rejection of overreaching government but also as a referendum on “Mayor McSchwinn” and his biking buddies.

And let’s not forget the occasional physical clashes between cyclists and noncyclists. In an incident that illustrated just how quickly the two sides can come to blows, two bike riders were arrested in July 2008 for attacking a motorist on Capitol Hill during Critical Mass, the monthly rides-slash-demonstrations that clog streets to assert cyclists’ rights. The driver tried to leave a parking spot only to be blocked by a group of people on bikes. When the driver started yelling, the cyclists sat on his car. When the driver yelled some more, the cyclists started to rock his car. When the driver lost his cool, gunned his engine, and struck a handful of the cyclists? Well, they retaliated by smashing his windshield, slashing his tires, and punching him through his open window.

“This isn’t something that just snuck up on the City. They knew about it. And they chose to let people crash on it.”

Part of that jostling is simply due to a sharp increase in bikes on the streets. According to SDOT, as many as 8,000 cyclists commute into the city each day, which, as biking advocates will remind you, is 8,000 people not clogging the roads with cars. Not only that, downtown bike trips were up 35 percent between 2000 and 2011. And when you’ve got that many groups competing for the road, there’s bound to be some head-butting. “But I think it’s because we’re afraid,” says John Mauro, Cascade’s director of policy, planning, and government affairs. “When you’re driving around in your car and you see somebody on two wheels, you realize, ‘I could actually hurt that person.’ But you don’t want to, and that fear translates into other things.” Like raised middle fingers and honked horns.All of which begs the question: Why? How did Seattle, known across the country as one the cities most accepting of bikes, become so antagonistic toward the people who ride them? First of all, we’re not alone. “It’s happening all over the world,” says Seattle City Council member Tom Rasmussen. He chairs the City’s transportation committee and says he regularly commiserates with civic leaders from other regions who see the same tension on their streets. “Whether it’s in Auckland, New Zealand, or Portland, or Seattle, everyone—transit users, pedestrians, people who drive cars, and bicyclists—seek to use the same right of way. And it’s limited.”

To its credit, the city council has recognized the demand for better bike infrastructure and begun to address the need and, by extension, reduce the conflict. The City’s 10-year Bicycle Master Plan, unveiled in 2007, laid the groundwork for nearly a quarter of a billion dollars in improvements. Other cities’ bike-safety innovations—including cycle tracks, or bike lanes separated from traffic by concrete dividers—spotlighted a need to update the plan shortly after it was written, though, and the council hopes to publish the update by spring 2013.

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Concerns of a jury pool tainted by antibike bias aside, Anderton liked his chances when he filed the suit. For starters, he was in familiar territory. In 2001, he sued the City for negligence after several cyclists crashed on an awkwardly positioned set of train tracks beneath the Ballard Bridge. Three years later he won the first judgment for his clients.

And the evidence demonstrating that the City failed to mitigate a hazard it knew it created in South Lake Union weighed heavily in his clients’ favor. SDOT’s own employees had so effectively made his case for him—Peter Lagerwey, then a senior transportation planner for the department’s Pedestrian and Bi-cycle Program, called one section of the streetcar line “fatally flawed for bicyclists”—that Anderton didn’t even bother hiring his own expert witnesses to argue the danger of the tracks. Besides, he says, “If you speak to any lawyer, they’ll tell you that you can always pay someone to say what you want to hear.”

Yet the City slowly chipped away at his case. In July 2011, one year after the suit was filed in Superior Court, assistant city attorney Rebecca Boatright asked the judge to throw out a portion of it. Legislative and executive decisions, such as then–SDOT director Grace Crunican’s call on where to locate the streetcar line, are immune to liability, Boatright argued, thereby rendering moot the plaintiffs’ argument that SDOT was negligent in running the tracks through the part of the street where bicyclists typically ride. Judge Gregory P. Canova agreed on September 2, 2011, effectively flattening one of Anderton’s tires.

Ironically, though, Boatright seemed to concede the war to win the battle. “To be clear, the City does not dispute…that streetcar tracks in the roadway can present hazards for bicyclists who fail to negotiate the tracks at an appropriate angle,” she wrote to the court in her motion for partial summary judgment. “The concerns are well reflected in various reviewers’ comments to the proposed design plans, and in approving the project with a right-running track configuration, Ms. Crunican especially was aware of these concerns.”

Boatright is an 11-year City employee, and she’s been biking to work daily, year-round, for nine years. The only time she leaves her bicycle at home is when there’s ice on the road. She’s ridden alongside the tracks in South Lake Union—she has to go that way to get to her home in Fremont—but typically sticks to Dexter Avenue North, which separates bike lanes from the street with a two-foot-wide buffer zone and concrete islands at bus stops. Which is to say that acknowledging the potential for accidents on Westlake was an odd strategy for someone who benefits directly from bike-friendly roadways. But she sees the wrecks as unfortunate collateral damage in the on-going struggle to accommodate all forms of transportation. “The City very much wants to promote bicycling, but it can’t put in facilities exclusive to bicyclists on every street in the city,” she says. “There are multiple considerations that you have to look at when planning for a multimodal environment. And it’s a fact of transportation that tracks and bicycle wheels aren’t compatible.”

The City hadn’t designated Westlake a bicycle facility by painting in bike lanes, so it believed it had no obligation to pay special attention to the needs of cyclists.

She took that line of thinking one step further last March, when she filed another motion, this time requesting that the court throw out Anderton’s case altogether. “A distinction must be drawn between the City’s aspirational goals for promoting alternative transportation options and its legal duty of care with respect to the engineering and maintenance of its roadways,” she wrote in the brief. In other words: State law requires a city to keep its streets reasonably safe for “ordinary” travel, and because Westlake was now home to a streetcar line, cycling was no longer “ordinary” on that street. The City hadn’t designated it a bicycle facility by painting in bike lanes, Boatright said, so it had no obligation to pay special attention to the needs of cyclists.

Legally speaking, the argument may have been sound, but the City was contorting itself to protect its position and threatening to alienate the cycling community it had worked so hard to embrace. Even SDOT’s communications manager Rick Sheridan, who would only take my questions via email because the case was ongoing, seemed to have difficulty addressing the issue head on. When I pointed out the irony of an otherwise bike-friendly city arguing that cycling isn’t ordinary travel, he went into Bill Clinton depends-on-what-your-definition-of-is-is mode: “The term ‘ordinary’ can mean different things to different people, and it has both a vernacular and a legal meaning,” he wrote. “This is a question that is better asked of the City’s legal department.”

In the end, the City Attorney office’s decision to throw cyclists under the bus—metaphorically speaking, of course—may have been an example of needs trumping wants. The South Lake Union Streetcar was an expensive piece of transportation infrastructure, and one that can’t just be picked up and moved. So had Boatright not employed every argument available, including the ones that contradicted the city’s stated desire to promote bicycling, she risked losing the case and spending the next several years settling lawsuits from every bike rider who’s fallen—and will fall—on those tracks. Boatright herself will even cop to that, although not in so many words. “If we’re going to incur liability because some bicyclists have fallen on the tracks, then maybe we’re going to have to consider the draconian measure of telling bicyclists, ‘You don’t get to decide for yourself how to get from point A to point B,’ ” she says. “And we wanted that guidance from the courts.”

Once again, the judge sided with the City in early April, this time throwing out the suit entirely. But his reasoning had nothing to do with bikes or their place on Seattle streets. Instead he ruled that the plaintiffs had failed to make their case by not hiring any expert witnesses. Anderton was floored and responded by filing a motion for reconsideration—basically asking the judge to take a minute and think things over. The court denied his request, though, and as of press time Anderton and his clients were still mulling an appeal.

“This is not just a bike issue,” Anderton told me. “This is an access to justice issue. If the rule is that you need to be able to hire experts before you can get to a jury—when the evidence is, we think, really clear—that’s not the kind of judicial system that I think most people hope we have.”

Boatright’s argument that cycling isn’t ordinary travel really gets him fired up, though. “That’s just so wrong,” he says. “The City is encouraging people to ride bikes, and yet they’re saying they can put a trap for them in the street?” And he doesn’t buy the argument that SDOT has atoned for creating the hazard in South Lake Union by improving bike access elsewhere, including along Ninth Avenue, where it added bike lanes in April 2008. “We’re not saying that they have a special duty to make the streets as bicycle friendly as possible,” he says, practically shouting. “We’re not saying that we must have our own physically separated bike path wherever the heck we want to go. All we’re saying is, you owe us a duty of care.” He takes a breath. “Okay, I’ll calm down.”

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It was mid-April, and the sun was shining. The temperature threatened to break 70 degrees for the third day in a row—the kind of Seattle spring surprise you hate to love because it’s just a tease—and Mayor McGinn was all smiles. “It’s a good day here in Seattle, and not just because of the weather,” he said to a crowd of a couple hundred gathered near Swedish Medical Center in Capitol Hill. Behind him, 12 gold-tipped shovels were planted in a mound of dirt. He was here—along with more than a dozen other dignitaries, including King County executive Dow Constantine, state senator Ed Murray, and former mayor Nickels—to break ground on the First Hill Streetcar. The two-and-a-half-mile line will run from Cal Anderson Park to Pioneer Square, just north of CenturyLink Field, and begin operation in two years.

McGinn squinted into the sun as he waxed on about a new era in Seattle transportation. The line is just the next link in a system that will one day make it possible for Seattleites to get out of their cars and get to know each other as they ride into work together on mass transit, he said. And even better? The streetcars themselves will be built right here in the Emerald City. It’s a win-win for McGinn.

He spoke for several minutes, highlighting the $133 million project’s every benefit, except the one that you’d think a guy who got his nickname from a bike would want to crow about: Along Broadway this streetcar will run closer to the center of the road, making room for a brand-new 10-foot-wide, two-way cycle track along the curb, the first of its kind in downtown Seattle. The concession to rider safety was by no means a gimme—cycling advocates had to remind SDOT engineers of what happened in South Lake Union early and often in the planning stages for the First Hill extension—but it was proof that the City was capable of learning from its mistakes. Sometimes you have to walk before you can ride.

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