It took nearly two years, but a running group from Seattle accomplished its goal of running up each and every step of Seattle’s 525 listed public stairways. The group included Craig Soper, Tony Gaetjens, Craig Curran, Craig Foster, Monte Evans, David Olsho, Steve Paul and Martin Berg.
The final staircase was the 86 steps at the southeast corner of the Montlake Bridge on May 23.
The original list was provided by the City of Seattle Department of Transportation, however, the group discovered that 23 of the stairways listed were either closed, torn down or weren’t found. Additionally, the group discovered 41 stairways. The two sides are working together to compile a more accurate list.
“The project was a blast,” said Craig Soper, self-appointed group spokesman. “In addition to being a great workout, our many stairway runs were very challenging in terms of route planning. An ideal run would be a loop with a distance of 5 – 6 miles and encompass 10 –15 stairways.”
Soper added that they found it difficult to map out such a run, particularly if it was in an area of the city which was less familiar to them. And, due to the nature of stairway locations on dead-end streets, in alleys, or in other areas where streets do not go through, it was often hard to find the stairways with the given address.
“Sometimes, we had to ‘interpret’ the address and run an imaginary line for a given street to the stairway location,” said Soper. “Google Maps was a great tool, but even using that program, we could not find all of the stairways — again given the nature of stairway locations.
“Our project was a great motivation to get all around the city and discover new neighborhoods, ‘hidden’ streets, and great views,” added Soper.
Staircase Statistics
Total number of stairways – 525
Estimated number of steps climbed – 25,000
Number of runs to get all the stairways – 82 (Tony Gaetjens did it in 57 runs)
Approximate number of miles run to climb all of the stairways – 500
Approximate elevation climbed – 12,500 feet
Download a list of Seattle staircases:
PDF EXCEL
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