- 520 Trail (wta.gov)
Starting at the western end, the trail jumps right up to the elevated road level at East Montlake Park and continues east past Marsh and Foster Islands. There is access to the Arboretum Waterfront and Lake Washington Ship Canal trails from this western starting point as well. Follow the trail dropping down from the western high rise of the 520 bridge and across Lake Washington. Don’t miss several very nice trail pullouts along the length of the bridge with interpretive signage on the area’s history and wildlife. After reaching the eastern shore, the trail crosses through 520 Bridge View Park, a second easy access point and a good turn around place if you are only interested in the bridge walk.
- Pond (Wikipedia)
A pond is a small, still, land-based body of water formed by pooling inside a depression, either naturally or artificially. A pond is smaller than a lake and there are no official criteria distinguishing the two, although defining a pond to be less than 5 hectares (12 acres) in area, less than 5 metres (16 ft) in depth and with less than 30% of its area covered by emergent vegetation helps in distinguishing the ecology of ponds from those of lakes and wetlands. Ponds can be created by a wide variety of natural processes (e.g. on floodplains as cutoff river channels, by glacial processes, by peatland formation, in coastal dune systems, by beavers), or they can simply be isolated depressions (such as a kettle hole, vernal pool, prairie pothole, or simply natural undulations in undrained land) filled by runoff, groundwater, or precipitation, or all three of these. They can be further divided into four zones: vegetation zone, open water, bottom mud and surface film. The size and depth of ponds often varies greatly with the time of year; many ponds are produced by spring flooding from rivers. Ponds are usually freshwater but may be brackish in nature. Saltwater pools, with a direct connection to the sea to maintain full salinity, may sometimes be called ‘ponds’ but these are normally regarded as part of the marine environment. They do not support fresh or brackish water-based organisms, and are rather tidal pools or lagoons.
