It's Time to Skate!

It has taken eight years of planning and meetings to get this far, but the Plateau finally has hips, spines, boxes, steps and butter-smooth coping. That's right -- there's a real skatepark in the neighborhood courtesy of the Muckleshoot Tribe.

Located on the Muckleshoot reservation, this new park is open to all skaters who come with no attitude and want to enjoy a well-built park. You can tell this park was built by skaters by the flow the park offers. The concept, design and construction was done by local skatepark builder Grindline which has also built other great parks in Milton, Ballard and Bainbridge Island.

The street area of the park transitions through hips, boxes, steps and a mini-clampshell with full coping that all drops down into a really cool half-bowl with a speed wall to pump off of before working the roller back into the rail area. Did I mention this park has flow? The street area is all about linking tricks through the park; that's right, flow.

Sounds rad, huh? There's more: a full three-level bowl with butter-smooth coping. If you're a vert skater, you'll dig this bowl, which is actually a series of three bowls connected by smooth transitions. The shallow end is all about long grinds set up by cranking speed out of the deep end. The mid-bowl is offset perfectly so it can be worked from both the deep or shallow end. Regardless of which direction skaters work the walls of the mid-bowl, there's a clean line out with time to set up for something big.

Getting There: The new Muckleshoot skatepark is located off of state Route 164 at the intersection of Southeast 392nd Street and 172nd Avenue Southeast near the Muckleshoot Community Center. There is a fully paved parking lot and lights for night-time action.