Photo Walking

5 Spot restaurant along the staircase trail

    Recently I came across a website that has a list of 30 staircase trails throughout the city of Seattle and thought these would be perfect for photo walking. I’ve been doing photo walks since 2003, when I purchased my first camera. It's been something I’ve been doing a lot more this past year during this the Covid epidemic, especially in the last couple of months.   

    Seattle is composed of a series of hills and on those hills are more hills, slopes and ridges. Some of the steepest roads in Seattle: Denny Way, Dravus and Queen Anne Ave can be accessed by walking on the sidewalk. There are, however, many areas in Seattle where a sidewalk wouldn’t work. So Seattle built close to 500 staircases to access the streets below and above wherever you may be on any particular hill, some dating back to 1905. With these 30 staircase trails you can go in either direction, however the list does tell you how many up and down steps there are and favors the direction with more up steps than down. I’ve always loved walking and it's great exercise, especially if they involve lots of stairs to climb so it wasn't a problem to see the hikes were 4 to 5 miles, so I chose the direction with more steps up. I'm all for the challenge.  I chose the first trail on the list called “Queen Anne” simply because I could pick up the trail a half a block from my front door. I was familiar with most of the areas on this staircase climb, though I certainly hadn’t been on all the staircase before. Some of them are quite remarkable and beautiful such as Wilcox Wall, The Galer Crown and The Comstock Grand Dame.