Hiking Rattlesnake Mountain
April 15, 2006
Story coming soon.
The adventurers--Brian, Jill, and Matt--pause at the beginning of the trail. What a lovely sunny spring day. Just perfect for a hike.
A sign showing our origin (Snoqualmie Point) and our destination (Rattlesnake Lake). Estimates of the distance are variable. The Greentrails map, which should be definitive, says 14.7, but there's no way it can really be that long. We figure it's somewhere around 12 miles.
A lovely clearcut--typical in the opening miles of the trail.
Jill and Matt making their way up through the clearcuts.
As the trail climbs, it leaves the clearcuts behind and enters stands of young re-planted firs.
And finally reaches relatively healthy second-growth forest. Here's the "dusting" of snow we could see from the freeway below.
One of the first good views of the Snoqualmie Valley and North Bend. Mount Si is the massif on the right.
Brian, Matt, and Eric pause in the snow, starting to notice that it looks a bit more substantial than a light dusting.
A view down toward the valley through a gap in the trees.
Another view of the Snoqualmie Valley. This one was taken from the surprisingly snow-bound lookout at Grand Prospect.
Forging on past Grand Prospect, we began making our own path through the snow without the aid of bootprints to follow. Here we pause to do a little routefinding and note, not for the last time, that the snow seems to be accumulating.
After many miles of breaking trail in the snow, we're almost on the descent. Here's one of many radio towers atop the Rattlesnake Mountain ridge top.
Almost out of the woods now. From here we're looking down to the lower Rattlesnake Ledge, the popular short dayhike.
Nearly to Rattlesnake Lake, Jill and Brian pause and ask Eric to take an "edgy" shot of them hiking.
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