Feature Archives | Bainbridge Island Parks & Trails Foundation

Trillium draws more than 330 to run for the trails

Trillium draws more than 330 to run for the trails

Thank you to all who turned out for the Trillium Trail Run – more than 330 runners strong! All proceeds will help acquire, build and maintain more trails on Bainbridge Island.

Extra thanks to our sponsors who helped make the event so special for runners and supporters alike.

Keep checking back as we add more photos to the photo galleries. Post your own photos to social and ping us on Facebook and Instagram!

Thank you to Ron Stewart for additional event photos

On the course

Faces of the race […]

Trillium draws more than 330 to run for the trailsDouglas2025-05-13T15:05:57-07:00

BURT 100 ‘Ultra’ run raises $5K for Bainbridge Island trails

BURT 100 ‘Ultra’ run raises $5K for Bainbridge Island trails

The drive is, in their own estimation, “peculiar.” How else to describe the urge to run 100 miles on Bainbridge Island trails – nonstop, overnight, and this year in freezing weather – without, say, a bear on your heels?

It’s a fair question, says Chris Heiden, who co-founded the Bainbridge Ultra Running Team with Mark Goodro five years ago.

The inaugural BURT run – a modest 50 miles – was a loosely organized excuse to get out of the house when Covid cancelled every other run in the area. About 15 runners showed up, although some felt the course was too short.

So the Bainbridge “Ultra” got even more so: 100 miles.

“The drive for the 100-mile distance, for me, was that it’s so hard and the probability of failure high, just getting to the end is a kind of a life accomplishment,” Heiden […]

BURT 100 ‘Ultra’ run raises $5K for Bainbridge Island trailsDouglas2025-02-18T16:23:38-08:00

Big numbers for MLK Day of Service at Blakely Harbor Park

Big numbers for MLK Day of Service at Blakely Harbor Park

A volunteer force 230 strong made it “A Day On, Not A Day Off” at the annual MLK Jr. Day of Service at Blakely Harbor Park, Jan. 20.

It was the largest-ever turnout for the annual stewardship day at the park.

How about these impressive numbers across the board:

Blackberry, ivy and other invasive weeds (25 yards) tugged and hauled off to TILZ for composting. New native shrubs and trees (400 total) put into the winter soil, blanketed by yards and yards (50) of fresh mulch. Trash (10 gallons) picked up from nearby roadsides. Even pinecone bird feeders (dozens) crafted by small hands, to support our avian neighbors.

Here’s another great number: $200,000 – that’s the funding granted by the Parks & Trails Foundation to support Blakely Harbor Park restoration since 2014.

That number is multiplied many times over by the outstanding work […]

Big numbers for MLK Day of Service at Blakely Harbor ParkDouglas2025-02-16T14:16:21-08:00

Halls Hill Prayer Wheel restored by BARN

Halls Hill Prayer Wheel restored by BARN

On a serene hilltop overlooking Blakely Harbor, an unusual silence has reigned. The resonant chime of a 300-pound cast bronze bell, once a familiar sound to visitors of Halls Hill Lookout & Labyrinth, has been conspicuously absent.

But that changed last week, thanks to local artisans and modern technology.

“It’s something everyone loves and cares for, and it’s been such a challenge to repair,” says Mary Meier, Executive Director of the Bainbridge Island Parks & Trails Foundation.

She’s referring to the bronze prayer wheel that has stood as a centerpiece of contemplation at the Lookout for over a decade.

Designed by the late sculptor Tom Jay, the Prayer Wheel is no ordinary monument. When spun nine times, it activates a bell inscribed with messages of faith and wisdom.

But after years of use and damage from […]

Halls Hill Prayer Wheel restored by BARNDouglas2024-10-01T10:40:05-07:00

Help bring Suquamish Welcome Pole to the STO Trail

Help bring Suquamish Welcome Pole to the STO Trail

With support and in celebration with the Suquamish Tribe, the Bainbridge Island Parks & Trails Foundation has commissioned a cedar Welcome Pole by Suquamish artist Randi Purser, to be placed on the Sound to Olympics Trail on Bainbridge Island.

The Welcome Pole, representing Chief Seattle’s father, will inspire all to learn about the rich culture of our Tribal neighbors, and acknowledge that Bainbridge Island is the ancestral land of the Suquamish people.

The STO gateway is the ideal place for this Welcome Pole, a physical embodiment of a Suquamish land acknowledgment and an invitation for community members and visitors to learn more about the art and culture of our Suquamish friends and neighbors.

The Parks & Trails Foundation is fundraising to complete the project. Gifts through the Parks & Trails Foundation support the Welcome Pole, interpretative signage and installation on the STO near 305/Winslow Way.

The project is […]

Help bring Suquamish Welcome Pole to the STO TrailDouglas2024-09-24T16:05:13-07:00

Day of Remembrance was one to remember

Day of Remembrance was one to remember

The Day of Remembrance was one to remember.

The annual stewardship event brought more than 100 volunteers from the island, Seattle and beyond to tidy up the grounds of the Bainbridge Island Japanese American Exclusion Memorial at Pritchard Park. It marked the 82-year anniversary of federal Executive Order 9066, which on Feb. 19, 1942, authorized the wartime incarceration of citizens of Japanese ancestry.

The stewardship event – a prelude to the March 30 Exclusion Day observance – was hosted by the Bainbridge Island Japanese American Exclusion Memorial Association, and co-sponsored by the Bainbridge Island Parks & Trails Foundation and Bainbridge Island Metro Park & Recreation District.

Ellen Sato Faust, BIJAEMA executive director, thanked all for their participation.

“Young and old, rain or shine, volunteers play a crucial role in furthering our mission and ensuring that the stories and experience of those affected by the […]

Day of Remembrance was one to rememberDouglas2024-02-23T08:39:47-08:00

Rain can’t stop rowers in Waterfront Park stewardship

Rain can’t stop rowers in Waterfront Park stewardship

Rain means nothing to rowers. They are, they’re glad to remind you, out on the water five days a week, come what may from the skies above.

“The only time practice would be canceled is if there’s whitecaps or really extreme weather,” says Hayley Ransom, a junior in her third year with Bainbridge Island Rowing.

Adds junior Bennett Hay: “But then we’d just go inside (the boathouse) and work out. We’re out here no matter what.”

No surprise then that a contingent some 60 strong turned out for the club’s latest ParksCorps volunteer stewardship event at Waterfront Park – under soggy winter skies, and on Super Bowl Sunday at that. Not to row, but to steward the park.

Site of the new Stan Pocock Rowing Center, Waterfront Park is home ground for the rowers. The club has adopted the park environs in turn, and the […]

Rain can’t stop rowers in Waterfront Park stewardshipDouglas2024-02-23T09:49:59-08:00

Forest thinning underway at Strawberry Hill

Forest thinning underway at Strawberry Hill

Even a skinny tree makes quite a WHUMP when it hits the ground.

As we are there to hear it, an age-old philosophical question remains unsettled. In any case there are the echoes, reverberating through the misty morning and across the island to herald that forest thinning at Strawberry Hill Park has, in fact, begun.

WHUMP.

“It’s a shocking sound for such a small tree, isn’t it?,” reflects Lydia Roush, Parks Superintendent for Bainbridge Metro Parks. “But they’re so dense, and Douglas fir is heavy.”

It’s a first-of-its-kind project on the island: restoring an overdense, profoundly unhealthy forest through aggressive thinning and strategic replanting, while at the same time carving out chute-like paths for the new bike trails that soon will criss-cross down the hillside.

About 40 percent of the trees are coming out. In the shadow of those […]

Forest thinning underway at Strawberry HillDouglas2024-03-05T07:51:43-08:00

Find winter peace in parks and trails

Find winter peace in parks and trails

We are in the approach of the shortest day of the year, Dec. 20. The winter months can feel like a long dark tunnel through which we must pass endless hours in low light and shortened days. The moistness of the air is heavy, and the mists cling and linger in the fir and cedar branches shooting skyward.

The cloud layer is soddened and gray, and the distant memory of summer flowers feel at their very farthest. It is time to harvest the gifts hidden among the shadows in the woods and within our beautiful parks and beaches.

Drip-drip-drip go the rain droplets falling from wet branches as the breeze loosens them and they fall to the ground. The thirsty soil drinks them up and laughs a cheerful splash back to the ear. Mushrooms, rotted wood dissolving in the rains, laden covered branches with gray furry lichen, fallen leaves, evergreen huckleberry, salal, […]

Find winter peace in parks and trailsDouglas2024-01-25T16:17:10-08:00

Amanda Nathan: Remembering parks in your will

Amanda Nathan: Remembering parks in your will

Amanda Nathan

Learn more about remembering the Bainbridge Island Parks & Trails Foundation in your will: LEARN MORE

Conversation with Amanda Nathan, Estate Planning Attorney

Amanda Nathan is a Bainbridge Island parent and a partner at the law firm Gordon Thomas Honeywell LLP, where her practice focuses on estate planning, probate, and trust administration. Born and raised in Tacoma, she moved to a home near Moritani Preserve in 2020 after living abroad in Belfast, Northern Ireland.

Since then, Amanda has leaned into her volunteer work with local parks and trails, recently as the chair of our Friends of Moritani Preserve Committee, as well as a co-founder of the Saturday morning Fort Ward parkrun.

Amanda sat down to talk with Bainbridge Island Parks & Trails Foundation staff about her perspective on charitable gifting as a component of estate planning, as well as her passion for parks, […]

Amanda Nathan: Remembering parks in your willDouglas2023-10-26T14:41:22-07:00