| At meeting was held on Wednesday May 22 at Marymoor Park regarding the trail connector project. The objective is to build a trail through Marymoor Park that connects the Sammamish River Trail with the East Lake Sammamish Trail .
There was a crowd of approximately 40 – 60 of which at least 25% were equestrians!
They are going to be deciding between two proposed routes
• The central route which goes along side the road through Marymoor Park for the most part
• The southern route which goes along the edge of the dog area and disrupts the pea patch somewhat.
The trail will be a total of 29 ft wide including space cleared for signs and visibility. There will be a 12 ft wide paved trail and along side that a 5 ft wide soft surface trail. On the picture of the trail, in the 5ft area they had a picture of a person walking a dog but they said it was also "potential equestrian"
One official made a comment that they did not want to discuss equestrian use of Marymoor at this meeting but they quickly learned that a large portion of their audience was there to discuss just that. After they provided an overview of the project, the first 30 minutes of question period was taken up by equestrians requesting that they be allowed back into the Park, that the new trail accommodate equestrian use and that the connection with Bridlecrest trail be improved so that it is safe for horses.
There were a number of Bridle Trails folks there who emphasized that we do not want to be isolated and need equestrian-safe trails that connect us with the rest of the regional trail system. We asked what the process was to reverse their arbitrary decision over a year ago to ban horses and they said this was the first step. They would not say what the next step was.
They wanted all comments in writing and provided a comment sheet. Our next steps are to flood them with written comments requesting that equestrians be allowed back in Marymoor and that the Bridlecrest trail connection be made safe for equestrian use.
As far as making Bridlecrest trail safe, we are proposing, at a minimum, that mounting blocks be placed at the base of the Bridlecrest trail so that equestrians can dismount to cross West Lake Sammamish way and then have mounting blocks on the north side of the entrance so that they can remount. Lorraine Trosper has been working with Redmond City and KC Parks to make that happen.
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