360 Trails Park

Scott Turner, KP News

Adjacent to Gateway Park is 360 Trails, a labyrinth of trails for mountain biking, hiking and horseback riding. The Washington State Department of Natural Resources leased the property to Key Pen Parks for 50 years in 2009. Photo courtesy Key Pen Parks

The job of keeping the 360 Trails Park in good shape recently got a little easier when Key Pen Parks purchased a big new mower.

According to Scott Gallacher, executive director, his group was looking for some much-needed equipment late last year “and this mower just happened to become available.”

Gallacher described the new tool as a walk-behind flail mower. “It’s a fairly good-sized mower that you walk behind. It’s on tracks, not on wheels,”he said.

Volunteers, especially Courtland Capwell, have been using the new mower to help trim the park’s existing trails and to blaze new ones.

“Courtland’s efforts have mostly focused on the mountain bike trails, which is great,”Gallacher said. “We also have many multi-use trails, which are typically geared toward all user groups, not just a single group.”

The new mower is also put to use at other Key Pen properties on the peninsula.

Gallacher is currently looking for volunteers to participate in the organization’s Adopt-a-Park program at 360 Trails.

“In the Adopt-a-Park program, we ask individuals or groups to commit to working on the property, say, four times a year,”Gallacher said.

Capwell is doing a great job on the mountain bike trails he has adopted, “but we have many other areas in the park that we’d like to have individuals or groups or businesses adopt, also,”Gallacher said.

“The 360 Trails is such a large property––360 acres––we realize we need more than just one person or one group to adopt that property.

“Our volunteers allow us to stretch our dollars. Last fall, we hired help from Washington Conservation Corps to build some trails for us. We’re trying to add trails to the 360 property as our resources allow,” Gallacher added.

Adopt-a-Park work is “mostly hands-on, physical work, but if someone wants to make a monetary donation, we’ll gladly accept it,”he added.

Sami Jensen is the Adopt-a-Park coordinator at 360 Trails.

To volunteer or to make a donation, contact Gallacher at (253) 884-9240, extension 21.