Best Sub-Half Marathon Trail Runs near Seattle, WA

While some outsiders might think of Seattle as a dreary, rainy city, trail runners in the loop know that Seattle is home to some of the best singletrack in the nation. “Seattle. . .boasts one of the most extensive trail networks in the country, with hundreds of miles of cushy, pine-needle-covered trail accessible within a half-hour drive of the city,” writes Tim Mathis for Trail Runner magazine. "Within a few more hours’ drive, an even wider variety of terrain is accessible, ranging from alpine ascents to high desert to coastal rainforest," he continues.

In this guidebook we’ve rounded up the best trail runs near Seattle that are less than a half-marathon distance. But with many of these routes, it’s easy to make them much, much longer. In many of the close to town trail systems like Tiger Mountain, Taylor Mountain, Cougar Mountain, and Squak Mountain, there’s no end of connecting trails and options for bonus mileage. And the Summerland run? Well that’s just a short section of the burly 93-mile Wonderland Trail that circumnavigates Mount Rainier. So yeah, it can always get harder!

Oh, and that temperate weather? It’s “not actually that bad, no matter what you’ve heard,” according to Mathis. It “allows easy, year-round access to [Seattle’s] trails.”

Sources:
https://trailrunnermag.com/destinations/northwest/seattles-ultrarunning-renaissance.html
https://rootsrated.com/stories/quick-dirty-guide-best-seattle-trail-running