What activities do you regularly participate in at Little Mountain? What single activity is the most important to you at Little Mountain Park? What suggestions do you have to improve Little Mountain Park?
If you have answers to these questions, the Mount Vernon Parks and Recreation Department would love to hear it.
The department is in the process of updating the master plan for the 517-acre Little Mountain Park, located just south of the city limits.
An online survey will be open until Nov. 26, after which parks department staff will begin categorizing and ranking the frequency of responses. It is available by following the parks department links at http://www.ci.mount-vernon.wa.us.
The master plan was last updated in 1990. Use patterns and growth projections have compelled the department to take a fresh look at the plan, said parks Director Larry Otos.
So far, a public open house and input from an advisory committee have revealed that the public would like more multi-use trails on the hill — ones that can be used by joggers, walkers, hikers and mountain bikers in harmony.
Another request has been to create a range of trail experiences so that users of various ages and physical abilities can enjoy the forest. That will likely involve putting more switch backs in some of the trails so that the journey is more comfortable for less athletic users.
Advanced hikers need not fret, however.
“There will still be some hard trails,” Otos said.
The top of the mountain is home to two viewpoints that look out over the Skagit Valley and the San Juan Islands. Public input has indicated there is no need for more large viewpoints.
Some people have expressed that they’d like to see small viewpoints, however. These would be “peek-a-boo” clearings placed in different vantage points on the trail system, Otos said.
In addition to a desire to reflect public’s interests in the way the park is developed, a reclamation plan needs to be formed for a 65-acre rock quarry.
The gravel extraction activity there could be finished around 2015, Otos said, and a current reclamation plan for that land is outdated.
It calls for the creation of athletic fields and other developments that by today’s values, would be too obtrusive on the natural landscape, he said.
He said the park is heavily used, but there is no way to know how many, because a traffic count hasn’t been done in a long time.
“Whenever I go up there, there’s generally a handful of folks,” Otos said. “It’s one of our more constantly used parks. There’s people there all the time as opposed to at the athletic fields, where people might come just during games.”
Late last week, Otos said 151 people had filled out the survey. He said the input has provided a wide range of opinions, all of which will be taken into consideration for the future of the city’s largest park.
So far, one idea seems to be a sure thing.
“Multi-use trails is really what is resonating out of the survey,” Otos said.
