EDMONDS — Mother Nature dealt another hammering to Meadowdale Beach Park.
The park’s popular hiking trail to Puget Sound will remain closed possibly until sometime in March after heavy rains this month chewed through steep hillsides and damaged the path.
The typical summer trickle in Lund’s Creek gave way to a torrent during the record-setting Dec. 3 storm.
Rushing water caused two landslides near the trail, leaving behind holes at least 20 feet deep, county park ranger Doug Dailer said.
There was so much water that several large salmon were seen swimming in the meadow, Dailer said.
Mud washed into the lower park and had to be shoveled out, county parks director Tom Teigen said. The park and trail likely will remain closed until February or March.
“We are working with a number of volunteer groups” to plan out a repair schedule, Teigen said. “We’ll be back out there with a pretty dedicated force.”
The park has a history of washouts. The last was a decade ago.
The gulch area was homesteaded by John Lund in 1878. The site later was acquired by the Meadowdale Country Club. The private park closed in the late 1960s, in part because the club’s access road failed.
The land became a Snohomish County park in 1968, but lack of a safe road forced public access to be closed in 1979.
The park reopened in 1988.
Storm damage closed the park in 1996 and costly repairs were needed before it could re-open.
County officials haven’t estimated the costs to repair the trail, which winds along Lund’s Gulch for 1¼ miles.
The stream is home to migrating salmon, and forms a marine estuary as it empties into Puget Sound.
“Meadowdale Beach Park is beautiful, but delicate, not impervious to humans and natural calamity,” the county Web site says.
Michael Knight lives on the edge of the park, and hiked through it up to three times a week until the trail washed out.
“I miss it dearly,” he said. “There are a lot of regulars in the park, people who use it like me. I know people who walk it every day as part of their exercise and their whole routine.”
As chairman of Citizens for Meadowdale County Park, Knight fought housing developments that threatened to dump too much water into the gulch and park.
“It’s going to get worse as the county allows more building on the perimeter of the park,” Knight said. “The park is going to have more of these kinds of washouts.”
Reporter Jeff Switzer: 425-339-3452 or jswitzer@heraldnet.com.
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