Seattle couple Jake and Cathy Jaramillo hope their blog Seattle Stairway Walks will motivate urban hikers to go explore Seattle’s neighborhoods, from the unique perspective of its many stairways.
On Thursday, they detailed a walk of Fremont on their site that “reveals different facets of Fremont: blue-collar, artsy-bohemian, high-tech hipster if you do both the main and the optional routes, you’ll come away with a wide-angle view of this very complicated, lively, scenic Seattle neighborhood.”
The Fremont stairway walk is their eighth in a series that will ultimately cover more than 20 Seattle neighborhoods. The walk traverses Fremont north-to-south from the Ship Canal up to Fremont
Peak Park and back, covering 3 miles and 544 steps. And that’s not counting an optional side tour of the usual tourist attractions like the Troll and the Fremont Bridge – adding another 3/4 mile and 86 steps.
To say their post is detailed is something of an understatement. They include a route map and tons of information on each notable point along the way. If you ever wanted to know everything there is to possibly know about Fremont’s many stairways, this is your heaven.
Cathy says the genesis of Seattle Stairway Walks goes back more than a decade, when the couple lived in Southern California: “We used to go on weekend stairway walks with my parents, following a guidebook
called ‘Stairway Walks in Los Angeles.’ We saw a lot of neighborhood nooks and crannies we wouldn’t have seen otherwise. When we came here and found out Seattle has 480 stairways, we knew we wanted to do this.”
Keep an eye on the blog for future walks and if you decide to do the Fremont walk, let them know about your experience.