Lost Valley Archives | Bainbridge Island Parks & Trails Foundation

Lost Valley Trail takes a long stride forward

Lost Valley Trail takes a long stride forward

Twenty-plus years in the planning, the Lost Valley Trail is going to be on the map.

The Bainbridge Island City Council has unanimously OK’d the Lost Valley Trail project, a partnership between the City, the Bainbridge Island Parks & Trails Foundation and Bainbridge Metro Parks.

When completed, the mile-long trail will connect the Head of the Bay area with Fletcher Bay Road, through the Cooper Creek Watershed and woodland. It’s the approximate midpoint of the long-planned Cross-Island Trail route from Winslow to Gazzam Lake and Crystal Springs.

“There’s two decades of stories behind this, and we should celebrate as a community and as the City of Bainbridge Island,” said Andy Maron, Parks & Trails Foundation board member, who has worked on the project since inception. “Things get done – they take a while – but things get done when lots of organizations and people and governments work together.”

The project dates to the 1990s, […]

Lost Valley Trail takes a long stride forwardDouglas2023-06-23T11:38:07-07:00

Kitsap Sun: Trail planning begins for Bainbridge Island’s Lost Valley, a link in a cross-island rout

Kitsap Sun: Trail planning begins for Bainbridge Island’s Lost Valley, a link in a cross-island rout

Published in the Kitsap Sun, Nov. 24, 2021:

BAINBRIDGE ISLAND – Tromping through a hidden section of forested property near the head of Eagle Harbor, Connie Waddington reflected on her first visit to Lost Valley about 20 years ago. Then, she’d been a member of the city’s Open Space Commission tasked with determining how to spend funds from an $8 million bond measure approved by voters in 2001.

She remembered thinking: “Woah, who knew this was here?”

“We’ve all driven around Eagle Harbor and all of those places and here’s this beautiful place that nobody had any idea existed,” Waddington said.

Lee Cross, a member of the commission, told the Sun in 2004, “You have a feeling that you’re in this sort of lost world, and a dinosaur could stick his head around the corner. You have no sense at all that within a relatively short distance there are quite a few […]

Kitsap Sun: Trail planning begins for Bainbridge Island’s Lost Valley, a link in a cross-island routDouglas2021-12-07T09:34:54-08:00

Rediscovering the Lost Valley for public trails

Rediscovering the Lost Valley for public trails

THE MIST TURNED INTO A DRIZZLE, THEN A STEADY RAIN, THEN A DOWNPOUR.

Not the most auspicious afternoon for even a Northwest hike in autumn. So the party tramped about 50 yards down the sodden trail, paused for a quick photo, and retreated to the shelter of a nearby barn to chat and recall the day, nearly two decades ago, they first bushwhacked across this same land.

“That was coming from the creek, up this way,” recalled Andy Maron, who served on the City Open Space Commission when “Lost Valley” first slipped into the local lexicon.

“I remember jumping over that stream,” Maron said, indicating nearby Cooper Creek. “You didn’t have to wade it, but jump over it.”

There was no trail in those days, and Maron, fellow Open Space Commissioner Connie Waddington and an ad hoc group of explorers crunched their way through […]

Rediscovering the Lost Valley for public trailsDouglas2021-11-16T08:34:07-08:00