Big Gulch Trail

Great and easy hike with kids. It is so green!!! I’m from CA and we just don’t see green like this! As a photographer I just took it all in. What an amazing place. I’m just floored that it is in the middle of a residential area!!! It’s gorgeous! We had a blast.

This is a awesome low impact hike hidden right in the middle of Mukilteo. I love to start at the library and work my way down. It can be jogged also for a more advanced workout.
Take note that there is not any beach access at the bottom of the trail. It can get dark very fast and dusk with the heavy tree cover and streams can run over the trail making it mucky and slippery.
At the bottom if the trail one can take conquer the steep paved hill for a beautiful view of the sound, truly exceptional at sunset.
Leaving from the library and running up 92^nd around is about 5 miles.

I really wanted to like this. I’ve read other reviews favorably comparing this to Meadowdale, another area hike that runs through a gulch (Lund’s Gulch, in that case) down to the water. Meadowdale suffers from being overcrowded; this is exacerbated by the fact that it’s pretty much a straight shot from the parking lot down to the water… there’s nowhere for all those people to go but single file like ants.
This park, if it ever attains that level of popularity, will suffer the same problem. But there are some hurdles to that happening. I parked at the 92^nd Street Park, which isn’t even clearly marked as a park, across from the power substation. Then I wandered around a bit looking for where the trail starts. Found it, and headed down some steep steps (I thought I’d dread those coming back up, but they weren’t too bad), and proceeded south to where this trail hooks up with the east-​west run that goes along the stream.
The first section was just okay, with some road noise and the backs of apartment buildings or condos looming over it. As it heads west this looks a bit more like something you’d find up in the mountains, with some old if not untouched stands of cedar and western hemlock on the opposing side of the stream. (I was tempted to explore over there, but the stream looks difficult to cross).
Soon, though, things start getting weird. There are strange metal grates and cement things and pipes sticking out of the ground and… oh my God, what is that smell? Then some signs about «sewer valves». I don’t know what sewer valves are, but I can understand why nobody wants them near their house. I’m not sure if I walked down here on a particularly stinky day, but wow. There was an informational sign about nurse logs and all that and I couldn’t even stand to read it while enveloped in what seemed like a cloud of human waste and laundry detergent.
Fortunately the smelly area isn’t that long, and after that the trail runs along a picturesque ridge, and the trail work here is impressive. The drop-​off is steep in places and this could be dangerous for kids or excitable dogs, but for reasonably sober adults with good balance it’s neat, and not at all something you’d expect to find in Mukilteo.
After that the trail winds down the side of a hill, past an area that looks like it would make a fine campsite if one was allowed to camp in here, and down to where I was expecting to see a beach.
However.
Upon meeting a narrow road one is met with several intimidating signs warning that access to the area is at the consent of «the owner», another that says NO BEACH ACCESS, and finally, if one has the nerve to approach close enough (and I did, after walking all the way down here), signs warning people that the whole area belongs to the Mukilteo Sewer District. And a big gate topped with barbed wire, in case you didn’t get the hint.
So: kind of a mixed bag. The good news is, the disparate parts of this trail system ARE hooked up now, and I didn’t see much evidence of the mud that others were complaining about — someone’s been busy bringing a lot of crushed rock in here. But the odor problem is real and is rather jarring; people who are looking for an outdoors adventure are going to be put off by something that smells more like an outhouse adventure. And finally the lack of beach access is, for me at least, a deal-​killer. If I’m going to walk down a big hill to within a few hundred yards of the water, I want to SEE it at least.

The 92^nd street entrance is not clearly marked, it’s in the SE corner of the park, farthest from 92^nd street and near the speedway. We went down there on a sunny morning after a few days of heavy rain. We found a steep set of stairs leading maybe 60 to 80 feet down into the gulch. Then we hiked about 20 minutes, all downhill but not steep, before we decided there was too much mud to proceed. My guess is, that was about a mile to a mile and a half, and it was slightly challenging because of mud and old mudslides. It was really beautiful.
In some spots people had laid fresh branches (the wind had knocked quite a few down) into the mud to make it more passable. I’m not sure how much farther the trail goes. From what I can tell –looking at a vague map
–there is maybe another mile before a «gap» where the trail has been designed but not finished.
Coming back we veered off to the south and took the trail that comes up on the West side of the Mukilteo Library. Our total journey was an hour or so and I’d guess we went between 2.5 and 3 miles (another mile to hike back to our start on 92^nd street using surface streets).
I’ve seen various sources saying this hike has an incline of either 534 feet or 133 feet. I’m guessing we experienced about a 100 to 150foot change in elevation. The city of mukilteo office had a very nice person return my call and tell me they didn’t have easy access to that information and that «finishing» the trail is on their to do list. They said they do have it verified that there’s about 3400 linear feet of unfinished trail in the «gap». I thought it was so nice that someone called me and talked to me about it.
Neighbors have helped the trail in many places, and it would be great to see that continue. We ran into quite a few other walkers, even though it was starting to drizzle. I am planning to go back again. It looks (on google maps) like there’s a dual trail from the east side of the library and from the west side of the library. I’m just curious about that. I also might try to hike in from the West side of the trail, but only because I’m sometimes in the neighborhood.