The University of Washington is one of the most beautiful educational settings on earth, a sublime marriage of eclectic architecture and verdant landscape.
That landscape certainly provides an inspiring platform for learning. But it also serves up myriad great places to exercise — both body and soul.
UW Botanical Gardens
The relative quiet and dependably sunny skies of summer quarter make it the perfect time to explore the many spots on campus conducive to movement or mindfulness. And every little bit counts.
“Summer is an amazing time to get outside for exercise or your physical activity ‘snack,’” says Dr. Jonathan Drezner, MD, director of the UW Medicine Center for Sports Cardiology and team physician for the Washington Huskies, Seattle Seahawks and OL Reign. “Our beautiful UW campus offers many areas to walk, jog, climb, swim and explore!”
Join us on a wellness tour of the UW as we count some of the ways that campus can be your playground.
Prime movers
We should first introduce one of the principal protagonists of any story on campus wellness: UW Recreation, which serves faculty, staff and retirees as well as current students of all three UW campuses.
UW Rec manages multiple-use sports fields, courts and facilities, organizes a litany of intramural leagues and tournaments, coordinates club sports, hosts wilderness adventures — even rents outdoor equipment.
“UW Recreation offers a multitude of options for recreation, fitness, wellness and fun,” says Katie Beth, associate director for facilities and operations at UW Recreation. “Rent a boat at the Waterfront Activities Center to paddle on Union Bay, hit a bucket of balls at the Golf Range, play soccer, flag football, ultimate, tennis, sand volleyball or basketball on the outdoor fields and courts, go bouldering at the outdoor Husky Rock, rent outdoor equipment from the Gear Garage and the Waterfront Activities Center, join an Intramural team to play a sport with friends, or join a Rec Club team to play either recreationally or competitively, and go on a trip with the UWild Adventures program.”
We’ll unpack more of this later. But before we venture outside, let’s explore…
The great indoors
UW Recreation manages the IMA (or Intramural Activities Building) on the Seattle campus, a deluxe athletic club available at deeply discounted cost for those of us fortunate enough to be associated with the UW (plus our plus-ones).
The IMA
It would take an entire article to list the entire catalog of fitness and wellness and activities and resources on offer. In short, the IMA has legions of cardio and strength-training machines, a calendar full of classes on fitness, mindfulness and yoga, sports skills and martial arts available with a Rec Class Pass. There’s indoor climbing and bouldering, lap swimming and pickup basketball, volleyball, badminton and pickleball, plus roller skating, archery or log rolling on certain Friday nights. You can run/walk laps around an indoor track-with-a-view, work with a personal trainer, get a nutrition consultation or enjoy a massage.
UW Bothell is served by the Activities and Recreation Center (ARC), an indoor fitness center and outdoor sports & recreation complex offering cardio and strength equipment and wellness classes, outdoor skills classes and group adventures, plus and a wide range of intramural sports (open to faculty and staff, too).
UW Tacoma features the onsite University YMCA Student Center — which is open to faculty and staff with a YMCA membership (joining fee is waived). The University Y offers a variety of fitness and recreation services, cardio and strength equipment, a basketball court, a track, a climbing wall, reflection room, daily fitness classes — even a piano for those who like to tinkle the ivories.
Games people play
UW Recreation is your portal to a wide range of sports that revolve around a ball (or other roundish object). Game play happens inside the IMA, in its warren of basketball, racquetball, squash and badminton courts, and outside the IMA, among the nearby network of tennis and sand volleyball courts and athletic play fields.
UW Recreation play fields
Across the E-1 and E-18 parking lots lies the UW Golf Range, an on-campus chance to work on your stroke while exorcising the day’s frustrations at the business end of a driver. Farther east on Clark Rd., find another patch of utilitarian grass and turf play fields.
These facilities are home to Intramural Sports (also run by UW Recreation). And they are not just for students. Intramurals are also open to UW employees and plus-ones with a UW Rec membership. You can participate in single-gender or co-ed leagues and tournaments. And the list of sports is extensive, including flag football, volleyball, sand volleyball, basketball, inner-tube basketball, pickleball, kickball, dodgeball, wiffleball, spikeball, softball, soccer, futsal, ultimate, tennis, table tennis, badminton, cornhole, Kan Jam and something called water battleship.
There’s even a recreational division just for faculty, staff and grad students engaging in flag football, basketball, soccer, softball and volleyball. Don’t have a team for any of the leagues? You can sign up as a free agent.
Feeling more ambitious? UW employees are also eligible to participate in any of 40 Rec Clubs, which transcend the traditional ball sports to encompass aikido, archery, climbing, equestrian, ice hockey, rowing, running, skiing and wrestling, to name just a few.
Exploring on foot or by wheel
The UW’s sprawling Seattle campus is the hub of a chain linking multiple magical park lands managed by both the University and the City of Seattle — all intersected by the venerable Burke-Gilman Trail, a converted rail line that winds through campus on its 19-mile route from Ballard to Kenmore at the top of Lake Washington.
This all adds up to miles and miles of idyllic trails — both earthen and paved — radiating from campus on which to run, walk, bike, scoot, skate or scamper to your heart’s delight.
Traveling eastward, spy a bald eagle, heron, Anna’s hummingbird or solitary sandpiper amid the restored wetlands and shoreline of the UW’s Union Bay Natural Area, one Seattle’s finest birding sites.
Union Bay Natural Area
While passing through this eastern outpost of the UW Botanical Gardens, see what’s in season at the UW Farm, survey the lovely landscaping of the Center for Urban Horticulture, and commune with the resident turtles and ducks along the zigzagging boardwalk through Yesler Swamp. Extend your jaunt via the Burke-Gilman a few miles further to the play fields, meadows and wetlands of sprawling Magnuson Park, on the site of a decommissioned naval base along the shores of Lake Washington.
Across the Montlake Bridge to the southeast of campus, loop through brushy Foster Island (when the trail is passable) and on to the charming hillocks and meandering paths of the Washington Park Arboretum — another of the UW Botanical Gardens — to experience a diverse collection of horticulture in an Edenic setting. Want even more green? Continue uphill to via the fairy-tale fern gully of Interlaken Park all the way Volunteer Park and its iconic red brick water tower, whose commanding view is accessible to all who are willing to ascend its corkscrewing staircase. Consider returning to campus via Montlake Playfield, through its hidden underpass trail that bypasses much of the 520 construction mayhem, and maybe buzz by sunny Fritz Hedges Waterway Park, the city’s newest, on Portage Bay.
The Burke-Gilman Trail
To the north, the Burke-Gilman will take you to the lush valley linking Cowen and Ravenna Parks, where you can follow parallel creek paths a few miles toward Green Lake, Seattle’s social and fitness epicenter, and the undulating paths, popular playfields and prominent zoological gardens of Woodland Park.
Find fine stretches of trail, too, in and around the forested campus of UW Bothell. Explore the sprawling wetlands bisected by the North Creek Trail (home to the famous nightly congregation of crows), which connects to the Sammamish River Trail all the way to Redmond and the Burke-Gilman south to Seattle.
And while UW Tacoma’s urban campus is situated in the historic heart of the City of Destiny, it not far from the arboreal splendor of Wright Park and the string of shoreline parks leading north to Point Defiance Park, the lovely peninsula in Commencement Bay encompassing forest, meadow, gardens and beaches—plus a zoo, aquarium and historic Fort Nisqually.
Climbing higher
For those seeking great heights — and the effort to reach them — the UW has some intriguing options.
Venerable Husky Rock
Climbers clamber up the artificial monoliths of Husky Rock, which was constructed near the Montlake Cut and historic ASUW Shell House in the 1970s to give adventurous students a safer alternative to scaling the walls of university buildings. Its leaning towers and variety of route types and difficulties draw experts and novices alike. Climbing is free, subject to weather and at your own risk. And mind the goose poop.
Or perhaps a more controlled environment is more your vibe? UW Recreation operates the Crags Climbing Center, three stories of manufactured rock faces rising up the IMA that offer scrambling and roped climbing for all levels. Even if you’d never consider climbing, check out the view balcony beside the running trail for a bird’s-eye view of the vertical action below.
Want to test your mettle on the region’s natural crags? Sign up for a UWild Adventures climbing outing or join the UW Climbing Team.
Campus stairs climbing Wahkiakum Lane
For those seeking a less-technical vertical workout, the UW’s central campus is surrounded by open-air stairways — especially on the vertiginous slope that climbs from the E parking lots off Montlake Boulevard and Husky Athletics facilities. The longest route climbs over 200 steps from the E-18 lot via Whatcom Lane through the maze-y hidden staircase from Padelford parking lot to reach the summit on Stevens Way. The steepest route climbs over 175 steps from the middle Montlake footbridge via Wahkiakum Lane to nearly the same high point next to Padelford Hall. Just north of campus, a shaded set of stairways climbs 230 steps along NE 52nd St., taking you past a charming cluster of historic shingled Craftsman cottages hidden perched like treehouses on the steeply forested slope.
You can also raise your heart rate by scaling the Grand Staircase that bisects UW Tacoma and the stairs that follow the slope beside Discovery Hall at UW Bothell.
And, for bite-sized bursts of exercise throughout your day, don’t count out your building’s internal stairways. Always a healthy alternative to the elevator. At the pinnacle of the U District, some committed UW Tower dwellers make a daily habit of hoofing up the building’s 22 stories.
Water sports
Framed by miles of shoreline, the UW campus lands are also a paradise for enthusiasts of human-powered water sports.
Be the captain of your own (borrowed) vessel at the Waterfront Activities Center (WAC), nestled on the shores of Union Bay. The WAC rents kayaks and canoes by the hour from spring through fall. You can also rent kayaks and paddleboards at Agua Verde Paddle Club (and cap your adventure with a taco and tropical beverage).
Boating at the WAC
UW employees can learn to sail with the student-run Washington Yacht Club, which operates a fleet of dinghies, catamarans, daysailers, keelboats and windsurfers.
Want to row like the “Boys in the Boat?” Join the Union Bay Rowing Club (UBRC), the UW’s sub-varsity place to learn sweep rowing and sculling. Just across the University Bridge, you’ll find programs for beginners and experts alike at the Pocock Rowing Club, named after Washington’s legendary boat-builder and rowing philosopher George Yeomans Pocock.
Or maybe you’d rather be in the water than on it. You can learn to swim, get in your laps or take an aqua fitness class in the new and daylighted IMA pool. For more adventurous plungers, there are many unsanctioned places to take a dip off various docks and shorelines that wrap around south campus and the UW Botanical Gardens. Just don’t expect any lifeguards. You will find lifeguards — in season — patrolling established beaches at Magnuson Park and Green Lake, among a vast network of King County beaches.
Moments of mindfulness
Sometimes you want to raise your heartbeat. Others, you want to lower it. Tucked here and there amid the everyday hustle of a major university system are countless spots to escape the throngs and take in a moment to reflect, meditate or center yourself.
The Silent Reading Room of the UW Bothell Library offers a vaulted window on the arboreal world outside. Also restorative is a stroll through the century-old Uplands forest, the Chase House Orchard or the North Creek Wetland.
An urban village, UW Tacoma is just a short walk from the green space of Wright Park and the contemplative pedestrian Bridge of Glass, with its thousands of colorful Chihuly works, in the Museum District (or try the Chihuly Room of the UWT Library).
Grieg Garden
UW’s Seattle campus is graced with such untrodden treasures as Sylvan Grove, the pastoral home of the UW’s iconic Ionic columns, the hidden sanctuary of Grieg Garden near the HUB and, just outside its natural green walls, the curiosity of an artistic — and quite inviting — red swing.
Take a seat on a bench or plop down on the lush grass of the Liberal Arts Quad, Denny Yard or Parrington Lawn, which can transform into veritable fortresses of solitude when the usual hustling human highways slow down on summer days.
Further afield, find a shady respite from summer heat in the Yesler Swamp. Escape the madding crowds in any of the Washington Park Arboretum’s exquisite 230 acres (The Japanese Garden, Rhododendron Glen, Woodland Garden and the cathedral-quiet Pinetum are a few favorites).
On a fine day, contemplate the ducks paddling across Drumheller Fountain, the breathtaking view down Rainier Vista, the Grove and meadow on Montlake Cut just behind the UW Medical Center or the aromatics of the UW Medicinal Garden.
Sylvan Grove and the UW Columns
On a foul day, take scenic cover in PACCAR Hall’s Hogan Terrace overlooking Denny Yard or embark on a botanical tour of the world in the UW Biology Greenhouse (open to the public for free Thursday afternoons).
Whatever the day, you can always find peace and quiet in a network of prayer and meditation spaces located across all three campuses and UW Medicine system.
Contemplate the planet’s rotation at the mesmerizing Foucault pendulum in the Physics Building. Gaze to the heavens inside the James Turrell Skyspace: Light Reign, in the Henry Art Gallery.
And no list of meditative spaces would be complete without the many muffled nooks and quiet crannies across the UW Libraries system. The most iconic, of course, is grand Reading Room in Suzzallo Library, where the gothic hush is often described as downright Hogwartsian.
