15 August 2006 by ben.

On 12 August, Bonnie and I headed to North Bend for a hike up Bare Mountain, but thanks to signs that said the back country was closed (only private land, as it turned out later), we skirted around the Mount Si Days Festival headed up to Snoqualmie Pass, got up-to-date information at the forest ranger outpost, and descended a couple miles back towards Seattle to the Annette Lake / Denny Creek trailhead. Kind of a late start, but we were glad just to get there after all that traffic in North Bend.

The early part of the trail passed through a very mature forest, so there was little undergrowth and few birds. The freeway was quite audible for a while, except near the beginning when the trail crossed the smallish but vigorous Denny Creek. The going was easy for a while as the trail gradually ascended up and over the Iron Horse Trail, a smooth gravel rails-to-trail conversion of the old Snoqualmie Pass line. We paused there for a couple photos before continuing and saw a few mountain bikes coasting around the curve through the thick evergreen forest.

The next couple of miles saw us climbing quite a bit, and at times there were some great views across the valley. Ultimately, we climbed from about 1900′ at the trailhead to a peak of 3600′, dropping just slightly in the last 1/2 mile to the the lake.

Bonnie cooled herself off at the lake, and as we settled in to our picnic, we were surrounded by dozens of small black flies. We retreated a bit into the forest where the flies were fewer in an area where people evidently camped quite often, still with a nice view of the lake over the underbrush and under the high branches of the cedars and Douglass firs.

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15 August 2006 by ben.

My blog for posting contemporaneous musings and photos.

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