VOL · ISUMMER 2026
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← FROM THE FIELD · VOL. I, N° 76PLATE B · ELEVATION · SUN ALT 49°AFTERNOON · CAPITOL HILL · CAL ANDERSON
PLATE · ELEVATION · ELM ROWCONTINUOUS CANOPY · PLANE + ELM · 12 PM
SEATTLE · FIELD NOTES · 5 MIN

Capitol Hill’s maple grid.

Capitol Hill’s residential blocks are some of Seattle’s coolest, courtesy of 80-year-old big-leaf maples. Three walks that take you off Pike-Pine before the asphalt remembers June.

By

Seattle’s Pike-Pine corridor gets all the attention but none of the trees. Walk two blocks north of Pike and the Big-Leaf Maples take over completely — entire blocks of 10th, 11th, 12th, and 14th Avenues are full canopy from 10 AM to 4 PM through August.

These picks stay in the maple grid. We avoid Broadway (no shade, no thanks) and 15th Avenue East (sunny west side until 6). Pine Street between Melrose and 12th is the rare commercial block that picks up shade from the surrounding residential canopy.

The picks · 3.Graded JUN 12, 2026
  1. 01
    Cal Anderson to Volunteer Park

    11th Avenue’s maple tunnel all the way up. Full canopy until Galer.

    Shade
    86%
    Walk
    17 min
    Best at
    2 pm
  2. 02
    Cap Hill Station to Vivace

    Crawl up Denny under the trees, then east on Roy through the quietest block on the hill.

    Shade
    78%
    Walk
    9 min
    Best at
    1 pm
  3. 03
    Frye Art Museum to Cal Anderson (the long way)

    Up Boren on the east sidewalk after 4. The buildings flip the shade to your side for the last stretch.

    Shade
    70%
    Walk
    14 min
    Best at
    4:30 pm

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About the author
Amar Braithwaite is the founder of Stay Cool. He builds shade-aware navigation tools and writes the Field Notes corpus on urban shade infrastructure. Read the why →

Walk in the shade.

Stay Cool computes a shadow-aware route for any city we map.

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