Hike of the Week : Middle Fork Snoqualmie River

For our first hike of this double-hike weekend, we decided to head back out to the Middle Fork Snoqualmie trailhead to hike the Middle Fork Snoqualmie River trail. Of course, first we had to get there. 

But Woody and I are old hands at this now, so we just bumped our way through the potholes and arrived at an empty trailhead at 7:45a.m. It was raining -- hard -- so we put on our Gore-tex pants and jackets and got ready to hit the trail. As we were getting ready, two other Subarus pulled into the parking lot. Of course. 

Today we were taking the Middle Fork Trail ... but this pretty trail map also shows the Sammamish Lake / Otter Falls / Big Creek Falls Trail we *meant* to follow the weekend before, and the Quartz Creek Trail that we inadvertently took.

Perhaps I should mention that today was so wet and rainy that we set out head to toe in Gore-tex, including our bright yellow pack covers.

Shortly after leaving the trailhead, we reached this very pretty bridge over the Middle Fork Snoqualmie River.

That's a lot of Gore-Tex. But we did say we wanted to have a test run...

We crossed the river...

And headed off into the trees.

The first few hundred yards followed the edge of the river, but then we headed deeper into the trees.

Every so often we'd get a glimpse of rock wall -- really glad not to be going up this!

For the most part the trail was in good condition.

Sure, there was a little mud, here and there, but one expects that in the PNW in the spring.



There were a couple of blown-down trees across the trail, but they were easy to get over.

Okay, so it wasn't super graceful...

But I still stuck the dismount.

We also had a few stream crossings, some quite narrow...

Others a little more challenging -- we saw a few people who turned back at this point. Did I mention we love our Gore-tex boots?

But, for the most part, we just had a nice, quiet walk in the woods.

It was a day full of moss, ferns, and big trees.

We reached a point where the trail got a little weird, a bit over three miles in. We had joined a new stretch of trail, built to replace a stretch along the riverbank that had been washed away ... but there were a lot of trees down, so we decided to turn back.

Did I mention it was quite wet out there?

On the hike back the sky brightened a bit, and we caught a glimpse of snowy mountains across the river.

And eventually we made it back to the bridge and the trailhead.

We had spent just over three hours going 6.6 miles out and back -- a fine day out. We really liked this trail, though I think we liked it in large part because we saw so few people on it. That said, when the weather gets nicer, we'll be happy to head up into the mountains rather than keeping below the snow line.

Middle Fork Snoqualmie River

6.6 miles
663 feet of elevation