The North Admiral Ridge Walk Most Residents Haven't Actually Strung Together

If you live on the North Admiral bluff, you already know the Hamilton Viewpoint sunset shot. It shows up in every guide to West Seattle, and it deserves the attention. But the view is not really the story of this neighborhood. The story is what happens when you stop treating Hamilton Viewpoint as a destination and start treating it as the first waypoint on a walking loop that ends in an old-growth ravine most of your neighbors have never set foot in.

North Admiral rewards residents who move through it slowly. Between the formal viewpoint at the north end and the Schmitz Preserve trailhead off SW Admiral Way, there is a stretch of side streets, informal overlooks, and forest that hangs together as one route, if you know where to turn. This is that route, with the summer 2026 texture that makes it worth doing this weekend rather than someday.

Start at Hamilton, but don't linger

Hamilton Viewpoint Park is bigger than it looks from the overlook. The park covers 16.9 acres, was acquired by the city in 1914, and became a park four years later; it is named for Rupert L. Hamilton, a figure in the West Seattle community who helped establish it. Most visitors treat it as a pull-off, which is why the actual overlook can feel busy on a clear July evening while the rest of the parcel sits empty a hundred feet away.

If you are walking rather than driving, the standard approach up California Way SW is the wrong one. Come in from the top of the hill along California Avenue SW, cross into the park from the south lawn, and you get the skyline reveal without the parked-car foreground. This is also the entry point for the last Admiral Music in the Parks concert of the summer. At 6:30 PM on July 30, Hamilton Viewpoint hosts the AMP closer with Driftwood Drive playing hits from the 70s, 80s, and 90s. Bring a low chair. The grass runs out fast.

The block most residents skip

Between Hamilton Viewpoint and the Schmitz trailhead, there is a walkable spine along the top of the ridge that almost nobody treats as a walking route. It threads Sunset Avenue SW, Bonair Drive SW, and the narrow section of SW Massachusetts Street that connects them. The reward is a series of peek-through views between houses toward the Olympics, and a much quieter afternoon than California Avenue offers on the same day.

For context, here is how the two viewpoint experiences compare in practice:

The value of the back-street stretch is not that it competes with Hamilton. It is that it flips the direction you are looking, which is something almost no formal viewpoint in North Admiral does.

Down into the ravine

The transition from ridge to ravine is abrupt. Once you reach SW Admiral Way and drop south past 53rd Ave SW, you are at the Schmitz Preserve trailhead, and the neighborhood changes character within about a hundred feet.

Schmitz Preserve was formed from 53.1 acres of land donated to the city between 1908 and 1912, before the area had been completely logged, with the largest parcel donated by German immigrants Ferdinand and Emma Schmitz. That timing is the whole point. Most Seattle parks were assembled after the surrounding forest was already gone. Schmitz was set aside during the logging, which is why you can still find what you find here.

Some huge stumps in the park still show deep notches hacked high above the ground for the "spring-boards" on which axe men would stand to avoid having to chop through the lower root crown, the thickest and hardest part of the tree.

The trail system inside the park is short by hiking standards and generous by urban standards. Official park hours are daily, 6 a.m. to 10 p.m., and the park offers 1.7 miles of hiking trails. The Washington Trails Association route notes are worth reading before your first visit, because the interior is deliberately under-signed. Bring shoes you do not mind muddying, especially in the first quarter mile along Schmitz Park Creek.

Two practical notes for residents who have not been recently:

• The Admiral Way Bridge overhead is more dramatic from below than most people expect. Look up.
• There is no dedicated parking lot. On-street parking along SW Admiral Way is the norm, which is another argument for walking in from the neighborhood rather than driving.

What's actually new on California Avenue this summer

A walk earns its landing. Before or after the loop, there are three current-summer specifics on California Avenue SW worth knowing, all fresh enough that they change the routine for residents who have been away for a few months.

• Mud Bay has moved. As announced last April, Mud Bay is moving kitty-corner at the Admiral Junction, with a larger location, a larger selection, and dedicated parking spots. The new store is at the former Wells Fargo corner at Admiral Way and California, so the pet-supply stop that used to require a detour is now on the loop.
• The July 30 AMP concert is the last one. After Hamilton Viewpoint hosts Driftwood Drive, the summer concert series is done until next year. If you have been meaning to go, this is the week.
• The Admiral Block Party is a month out. The date is Saturday, August 22, and the location is California SW north of Admiral Way. It is expanding this year to start with acoustic music on Friday afternoon and evening and then the full day and night of music on Saturday. If you plan to walk the ridge that weekend, do it Sunday morning; the Saturday footprint will absorb the section of California Avenue you would otherwise use as a landing.

A working Saturday loop

If you want to do the whole thing in one outing, here is the route in order, sized for a two to three hour morning with coffee stops:

1. Start at West Seattle Grounds at 2141 California Ave SW. It is the pickup point the Admiral Neighborhood Association uses for its cleanup mornings, which tells you something about how central it is to the walking neighborhood.
2. Walk north on California Avenue SW to the south lawn of Hamilton Viewpoint. Enter from above rather than from the California Way parking.
3. Cross the lawn to the overlook. Give it five minutes. Then keep walking.
4. Drop south through the residential blocks. Pick up Sunset Avenue SW, veer onto Bonair Drive SW, and follow it back toward SW Admiral Way. This is the Olympics-facing half of the ridge.
5. Continue south on California Avenue SW to SW Stevens Street, then drop into Schmitz Preserve at the signboard. Do the short loop along Schmitz Park Creek and up to the Admiral Way Bridge underpass.
6. Climb back out at the Admiral Way trailhead. Head north on California to Mioposto for lunch, or back to West Seattle Grounds if you want to keep the loop tight.

The whole thing is roughly three miles of walking with one meaningful climb, and it strings together the two most defining pieces of North Admiral geography, the bluff and the ravine, in a single morning.

Why this route matters more than the sum of its stops

North Admiral gets described as a ridge with a viewpoint, which undersells it. It is a ridge with a viewpoint, a set of informal Olympics-facing overlooks the guides do not name, and a piece of Puget Sound forest that predates the neighborhood around it. Most residents have done these three pieces separately. Doing them as one walk changes the way the neighborhood feels underfoot, and it is the fastest way to remember why you chose to live up here in the first place.

If you are thinking about whether the house you own on this ridge still fits the life you actually want, or whether the North Admiral house you have been watching from a distance is worth a closer look, that is a conversation Mara Haveson has often. Schedule a Consultation when you are ready.