Oxbow Lake - striking gold
Aug. 1st, 2020 10:36 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tiggymalvern
With two draft fics finished and in the editing stages, I can now drag myself away and leave the house again! So a couple of days ago, I browsed the Washington Trails Association site, wondering where I could go that wouldn't be Busy with other people. I found a trip report for a hike Called Oxbow Lake, which I'd never heard of, and it turned out there was a reason for that, because it's new. They started making the trail in 2018 and it opened last year.
And while I was discovering that, I discovered something else too. They paved the Middle Fork Snoqualmie Road. This is SUCH a big deal. There are some good hikes along Middle Fork Snoqualmie, especially for winter, when the choices are lower elevation or snowshoes. But I've only been down there about 4 times, and the last time we still had the Scooby, so that was 4 years ago or more. Because after you got to the Middle Fork Snoqualmie Road, you had another 45 minutes of driving to go, along 15 miles of gravel booby-trapped by serious potholes. But now it's been replaced by smooth, perfect tarmac, and the trailheads have more parking spaces and actual SIGNS (no more '3 miles past the bridge at milepoint 12.3, look for the green gate on the right and in another 100 yards, there's a pull out on the left with space for 3 cars and that's the trailhead'). A whole new world of possibilities has opened up close to home!
So anyway, the Oxbow Lake loop hike is short, at only 2 miles, so I did it twice yesterday, once in each direction, because you see different things, and I followed the spur trails down to the river too. I was there for two hours and only saw two other family groups. Exactly what I was looking for :-)
As you take the trail from the car park to the lake, you get this view over the Middle Fork of the Snoqualmie River. It's a perfect postcard all laid out below :-)
Friends on the trail! A few damper sections where small streams ran below the trail had a multitude of tiny frogs hopping everywhere. I had to walk those parts very slowly so they could jump away and not get trodden on.
The outlet of Oxbow Lake, where it overflows to join the Snoqualmie River.
The loop trail circles round above Oxbow Lake, so that you're looking down on it through gaps in the trees.
There used to be some really big trees here, before logging.
Spiral remnant.
Horizontal or vertical? One way, it looks like a fairy pond in a grotto of a dark and mysterious wood. The other, it looks like the lake winds endlessly on into the distant mountain vista.
I had an afternoon appointment, so I needed a shorter hike not too far away, and not stupidly popular, and I don't think I could have found a better one.
And while I was discovering that, I discovered something else too. They paved the Middle Fork Snoqualmie Road. This is SUCH a big deal. There are some good hikes along Middle Fork Snoqualmie, especially for winter, when the choices are lower elevation or snowshoes. But I've only been down there about 4 times, and the last time we still had the Scooby, so that was 4 years ago or more. Because after you got to the Middle Fork Snoqualmie Road, you had another 45 minutes of driving to go, along 15 miles of gravel booby-trapped by serious potholes. But now it's been replaced by smooth, perfect tarmac, and the trailheads have more parking spaces and actual SIGNS (no more '3 miles past the bridge at milepoint 12.3, look for the green gate on the right and in another 100 yards, there's a pull out on the left with space for 3 cars and that's the trailhead'). A whole new world of possibilities has opened up close to home!
So anyway, the Oxbow Lake loop hike is short, at only 2 miles, so I did it twice yesterday, once in each direction, because you see different things, and I followed the spur trails down to the river too. I was there for two hours and only saw two other family groups. Exactly what I was looking for :-)
As you take the trail from the car park to the lake, you get this view over the Middle Fork of the Snoqualmie River. It's a perfect postcard all laid out below :-)
Friends on the trail! A few damper sections where small streams ran below the trail had a multitude of tiny frogs hopping everywhere. I had to walk those parts very slowly so they could jump away and not get trodden on.
The outlet of Oxbow Lake, where it overflows to join the Snoqualmie River.
The loop trail circles round above Oxbow Lake, so that you're looking down on it through gaps in the trees.
There used to be some really big trees here, before logging.
Spiral remnant.
Horizontal or vertical? One way, it looks like a fairy pond in a grotto of a dark and mysterious wood. The other, it looks like the lake winds endlessly on into the distant mountain vista.
I had an afternoon appointment, so I needed a shorter hike not too far away, and not stupidly popular, and I don't think I could have found a better one.
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