We did a really fun and vigorous hike today. We parked one car by I-90 Exit 27 and then drove to Exit 32 – Rattlesnake Lake – and hiked up, across and down Rattlesnake Mountain.
We have done this a few times before and it is always fun. We were shooting today to pretty much go right across without a break and within 4 hours.
Alas, there were so many blow downs starting around 2500 feet, with lots of snow at 2900 feet that we were slowed by having to navigate over/under/around, and by the fact that they threw us off the trail for awhile. Final time was about 4:25.
Blow down
But as always, awesome views:
Rattlesnake Lake and the mountains to the east
We actually met up with some birds who seemed interested in being fed – Derek put his hand out and one of them swooped, looking for a treat. Derek snapped some photos but they didn’t show the birds really well. But we did have some company up there.
I was appalled today at how much junk and crap is being left along the Iron Horse trail and at least one of the NF roads in the area by illegal shootists. They set up targets, drink copious amounts of canned booze (judging from the garbage) and blast away.
I forgot to take a picture of the ‘No Shooting’ sign.
Anyway, I was solo today and woke up too late to do Rattlesnake/East Peak. It would have been too crowded. So I drove a few exits east along I-90 and parked in the Ollalie State Park/South Fork picnic lot and started off going up the Hall Creek tail again, exiting at Iron Horse.
Not far from Hall Creek is a cool waterfall across the freeway. I think it is inaccessible for all practical purposes:
Waterfall north side of I-90
The topography going east on this trail, by the way, is interesting. To your immediate left is a sharp dropoff down to the area by the river. Farther left, that is north, across the freeway, are mountains we love to explore and are champing at the bit to explore more when the snow is mostly gone:
We want to go there
Er, actually that picture above is looking south from the Mine Creek bridge but you get the idea. This place might be accessible and I am going to look at Google Earth and maps to see how to get there.
It was 4.25 miles from the car to the McClellan Butte trail. I went about .7 mile up to the old forest service road, NF9020. The first section of NF9020 was tough to navigate because there were so many blow downs. It was the only place all day that had much snow.
Here is a snap of the very last NF9020 snowy section:
NF9020
9.2 miles, about 3,600 feet of elevation gain (only very short section we would call steep) not a bad day.
The Newcastle Golf Club sits high above Bellevue just east of the I-405 freeway. There are two courses, Coal Creek and China Creek. We played China today, starting on the 10th hole (a par 5), the tee just a little east of where I took this picture.
I wanted to do a GPS track walking the course, which I did (see visualization at the end of this post), and I wanted some pictures. I took this one just before we teed off and then forgot about the camera.
We played the back nine, our front nine, and then the 1st hole, our tenth and we we were standing on the 2nd tee. For David, who is an excellent, low single-digit golfer, it’s about 220 yards. For me it was about 175. I almost always screw up this hole and I am happy to walk off with a bogey 4. So I took this picture from the tee to show how tough it is:
Par 3 2nd hole at China Creek
The pin is so far away you can’t see it from this view, but it was just to the right of the middle of the first bunker on the left.
And then a bolt from the blue; my 4-hybrid was almost perfect, stopping gimme distance for my only birdie of the day:
My tee shot on 2!
As my father used to say, ‘even a blind squirrel will root up an acorn every so often.’
I did manage to shoot 40 on the “back” nine, for a 45-40 85, my first round of golf since September.
We are heading to Bandon Dunes in April so I better get cracking.
Hike tomorrow, solo, probably going to do Rattlesnake to East Peak, I need the exercise. I have been slacking the past few weeks with a nasty cold that seems finally to be leaving me.
Anyway, here is the round of golf at Newcastle/China Creek, starting on 10:
Fin is a great hiker! She made it all the way down Iron Horse Trail to Cedar Butte trail head; up to the summit; back down; and half-way back to the car on her own legs. Great job!
Total hike about 4 miles. Cedar Butte is not the tallest peak around but it is no slouch, particularly if you are 6 years old.
The view on top is nice:
Looking North
We had fun on the way down and stopped to appreciate some awesome little trees:
Very cool mossy trees
Fin had fun and we will do another hike – probably Little Si – as soon as we can get it scheduled. We were able to go out this afternoon because I started work really early (like about 3am) and Fin is off school this week.
What a fun hike today! Derek and I had talked about possibly hiking but it was weather-dependent, since Finley wanted to join us on the trail. The weather today was not perfect but it was only drizzling and not too cold so we did a hike that is not all that far from where Derek and Jill work.
It starts out just a bit steep and Finley made it all the way to the highest point on her own legs. Great job!
Finley in the lead
Although this hike is not exactly remote, it is fun to be in the woods:
Trail view
Today was all about fun, including a very cool tree Finley found:
Finley in a tree
All in all just a great way to spend Valentine’s Day.
We’ve been up here before, but it is always fun on the top of Mt. Si. Anyone who has ever driven anywhere near the towns of Snoqualmie or North Bend WA have seen this prominent sight many times, the Haystack on the summit of Mt. Si.
And this is undoubtedly the most popular hike for miles around. We saw tons of people on the top and we must have passed upwards of 50 people on the way down.
And we were using the less popular route!
Plenty of birds up there:
Blue Jay near the summitAnother summit bird
Once you get up there, it is fun climbing around the rocks:
Fun scramblingGrampy on the rocks
We could see Derek’s dad’s office from up there; it is the bigger building right across the street from the yellow building below:
D Square Energy Systems – where Derek’s dad works
No shortage of awesome views up there:
It sure is cool on the top of Mt. Si
6.6 miles, 3900 feet of elevation gain, a bit less than 5 hours, (including at least 30 minutes on the summit) so we call it a good day. We did the reverse Boulder Garden Loop which is mighty steep. The whole trail is steep; it gains about the same elevation as Mt. Washington but it is 1.25 miles shorter.
This is a pretty nice waterfall and it doesn’t require much of a hike to enjoy. It is not far from the trailhead.
Today, we only did about four miles round trip, but what a trip. As before, there were no tracks to follow. No one had gone as far on this trail since the snow. No doubt they gave up when the blow downs started:
Climbing over blow down
Not too far from here we were compelled to turn around, as it changed from ‘lots of trees across the trail’ to ‘the trail has been trashed by an avalanche’.
We were a bit short of our goal, but looking at the Garmin gps track (see below for the link) we can see we were pretty much on the right track. Just too tough to navigate over what is left after an avalanche.
Plenty of nice sights along the way:
View from the TrailLooking northwestMossy rest spotClouds, Snow, Forest
One odd sight was a tree, covered with spikes and sawed off. Did loggers long ago drive in the spikes to kill it? Or what?
Punctured and mangled
We really want to do this trail again with no snow. It was really deep and we were post holing up above our thighs at some points, so it was a bit enervating chugging along. But once you are up there, we are confident the maps don’t lie, and there are plenty of connections to old logging roads and unofficial trails.
This guy didn’t want anything to do with us. I think he looked back at us with a sneer (which we probably deserved) and disappeared.
We were going to complete the hike I tried alone on New Year’s Day, up Hall Creek to Iron Horse, to junction with Garcia, then up FR9020 towards Zig Zag summit.
We didn’t count on how tough it is to break trail with snow shoes. It is tough work, and we weren’t exactly walking on a simple, level trail. We were going up and up on an old road and we ran into a section that was totally trashed from what looked to us like a fairly recent avalanche.This went on for quite some way – in fact, we never did get quite through it. We hit a major road junction and turned around (see the gps/map visualization linked below)
Blow down section
Like I say, it is tough going breaking snow shoe trail. Here is what the trail looked like ahead of us:
Before
And this is what it looked like after we had broken through the snow:
After
There is never any shortage of great views on these hikes:
View along the trail
As we hit the Hall Creek Trail where it intersects Iron Horse we immediately noticed what is for sure the Zig Zag Trail. Derek went up a little way and totally confirms.
This is cool, next time we will go up Zig Zag and come down the less drastically steep way, the old road.
Yeah, that’s the summit but I didn’t make it today. Without snow this is a really nice hike. We get to the summit in about three hours.
Today, in the snow, the exertion was so intense I only went a bit more than 4 miles up in 3 hours and then I turned around. How deep? Well, here is a photo of one of the places where I broke through the snow and went up to my hip. I have my poles in place to show how deep the footprint is:
One place I went up to my hip
The combination of so much snow and lots of windstorms lately created a major blowdown problem. Here is one of the minor obstacles:
Lots of blowdowns on the trail
In one place I had to stop and figure out how to get by. I should have taken a picture but I was kind of preoccupied with the immediate challenge. I wound up having to go off-trail, partly down a hill, to get around the monster tree.
I should have brought my snowshoes. I had read a trip report that scoffed at snowshoes, calling them overkill. And indeed they might have been overkill that day, but today, it was sunny and (relatively) warm so the snow was getting soft and it was easy to break through. Ouch!
But, no regrets. I wanted a vigorous workout and hiking 8.6 miles up and down a very snowy mountain for 5.5 hours is pretty good exercise. And, as always, the views are to die for:
Looking south
I may go back next weekend, this time with the snowshoes. Live and learn.
If I want to count the blessings I would say that I found a new trail head and confirmed the Zig Zag trail (it starts as the Hall Creek Trail) but that’s about it.
My plan was to hike to Garcia Road and from there up to a logging road that winds around back and then to the summit of the mountain (unnamed so far, I believe) the Zig Zag trail approaches.
But I got off on the wrong path immediately; ran into a dam and had to back track; wound up on a semi-busy road in the area and back-tracked again; found Hall Creek trail and followed it up to Iron Horse/John Wayne, confirming it was in fact the start of Zig Zag; and then headed east on Iron Horse.
I made it to Garcia, started up the logging road but hit a massive blowdown. I couldn’t see very far beyond it but it looked like there was a long area of blocked trail. So I turned around and went back.
I would add it was about 30 degrees with a steady 35-50 mph (estimate) wind much of the way. It was coming from the northeast and walking east was tough, into the wind. It was almost like hiking a steep grade.
I lost one of my ice trekkers and going down Hall Creek I had my snowshoes on and that was more or less a disaster. I came close to sliding into the creek.
Hall Creek
It took me 30 minutes to do the last .2 mile because every single step had to be planned. I slipped several times and purposely took a couple of sections sliding on my butt.
I do not recommend this trail without major traction devices. Snowshoes sucked, the trail was so narrow I had to maneuver just to move in some places.
Weather permitting I will be trying this one again, with my soon-to-be-new ice trekkers next week, weather permitting. Just under 7 miles and about 3.5 hours. Not what I would call a successful hike but the weather was glorious and let’s not forget the views.
Northern neighbors
Update: After thinking this over for a few hours I am a bit less bummed about my failure today. For one thing, I was alone on a snow-covered mountain, breaking trail steeply uphill on a very windy day with blowdowns (trees blown down across the trail) all over the place. Had anything happened, I would simply have frozen up there. Anyway, after looking at maps and Google Earth of the area, it is clear that, in better conditions, this will be a marvelous hike. Next week is an overly aggressive goal, but when the snow is gone this one will rock.
