Niven Lake is a small "city lake" in that it lies between downtown and the new suburb of Niven, still in the process of being carved out of the rock.
The lake was once the city's sewage lagoon - possibly why it is currently so nutrient-rich and supportive of the kind of greenery that in turn supports a good food chain for wildlife.
A boardwalk at the end closest to the city hives off a small piece of water - one picture below is taken from the boardwalk and shows the Explorer Hotel (on the edge of downtown), the other shows the boardwalk itself (and there's my shadow! told you it was sunny...).
There are signs that say: "Hike with a friend" - which I considered briefly. If one has no immediate hiking friends, then it's either stay home or think broadly - and so I chose to think broadly, considering any hiker on this short trail "a friend." I met a few people - a young man walking the trail in his flip-flops! - but on the whole the trail is so close to development that it's all quite safe.
The trail's terrain varies - through flats such as the one above, over a bridge over wetlands; there's regular gravel but also some scrambling over 2.7 billion-year-old rock, some of the oldest on the planet. Occasionally one has to look ahead for the marker, such as the wooden structure on the top of rocks in the last picture.
And, finally, a not-particularly-good picture of the building where I live, just to provide some sense of distances - it's the tallest one in the frame.
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