Lennox Creek S24O
Andre, Andrew, Lee, Rory, Scott and I met around 5:30 on Friday at the start of the North Fork Road outside of North Bend. The plan was to repeat our previous trip up the North Fork of the Snoqualmie River, but to use a little extra time to dive deeper into the forest.
We got to the Lennox Creek fork around 7:30 and had a decision to make. The road splits here into three different directions and smaller groups explored the start of each of them. We decided to follow along Lennox Creek (which had as much volume as the Snoqualmie River at this point). Lennox Creek had the best scenery and comes tumbling down from the Snoqualmie Pass area in a very tight valley. I had a soft goal of maybe getting up to the road closure near the Bare Mountain trailhead.
The road is technically closed at the start of Lennox Creek, but trucks have moved the barriers out of the way and the road is being used as a 4×4 track. We still only saw two vehicles up there. The road surface is loose enough that it can be tough going ona 35mm slick bicycle tire, and I think Lee even walked his Pugsley with it’s 90mm wide tires up a couple of sections. Rory’s excellenthandling skills let him climb everything on the bike even with narrow tires and no granny gear.In exchange for the rough road and a little hike a bike we got some wonderful views and a surprising amount of solitude for being about 30 miles from downtown Seattle (as the crow flies).
At about 9:15 we were still about two miles from where we thought the road might end and needed to find a camp site. On the maps it looked like the valley was going to get narrower, which makes the likelyhood of finding camp harder. We pressed on anyway, exploring every side trail to see if it lead to anything good. We found the best option and started to scope out hammock and tent sites when Andre decided to look back on the road a couple hundred feet. He found a nice section of open forest and we setup campthere. The forest was pretty well established and had a thick canopy which left the forest floor much more open and accessible.
Hammocks and tents were erected just as night fell. Rory, Andrew and I filtered water while Scott, Andre,and Lee built a fire. Dinner was in darkness around the fire with a couple of beers. I slept surprisingly well through the night and woke up around 7am. The bugs were bad in the morning,so we skipped breakfast and started rolling early. By 10:30am we were back in North Bend getting breakfast at the cafe from the TV show Twin Peaks.
This might be it for my exploration of this area this summer, but I still have sections that I’m curious about. Sunday Creek and the hills over the river seem to have some promise. I still haven’t been up to Hancock Lake or Lake Callighan either.
That is a beautiful place!
That looks beautiful! Thanks for sharing the photos and the narrative.
Wow, nice write up and even nicer S24O. A friend and I are doing a 7 day tour in August that was inspired by and will take in most of the tour you and friends did in Gifford Pinchot National Forest. We”ll be starting in Portland. Should be fun.
Great trip Alex, thanks for organizing!
Here’’s some photos I took: http://picasaweb.google.com/andvinco/LennoxCreekS24O061209
Leaf — I think you”ll have a wonderful time in the Gifford Pinchot. I still think about that tour frequently and have loose plans to repeat and expand on it next summer. I hope you”ll send email when you return with your thoughts on it.
Andrew — Thanks for the photos
Looks like a blast. What do you like for maps -both for trip planning and then for using whil out riding?
Absolutely beautiful photography. Made me want to go fishing! Something I”ve always wanted to do is bicycle up to the remotest places with my flyrod….
Have you done that?
Wow, very inspiring pics and trip report! Right on.
hey! to set the record straight, i did ride the whole thing, except for the last hill that i walked up with scott since we were tiiiirreeddd.
chasing rory up that road-turned-creekbed (that scott is descending here) was ridiculous. like trying to follow a mountain goat.
he did claim that he was only going that fast because of his limited gearing… maybe i can sneak a triple crank onto his bike before the next ride.
Jimmy,
alex used mapper.acme.com, while I used google maps terrain. the mapper site has topo, showing trails and what not, but google kind of has more recent maps. either way, they arent 100% accurate.
and one thing I”ll note about the hill climbing comment Lee made is that most people within the group were carrying liquid refreshment to share/go with dinner, and I was not. I”m positive this very rude lack of weight could have added to the ability to get me up the hill. I”ll be sure next time to have liquid refreshement to go with dinner.
again, i appreciate being invited on this ride, and it was a blast!
I saw your blog and have a couple of questions: When I was last on Lennox Creek Road in summer of 08, there were tons of downed treed across the road between the start and the bear creek bridge. Did they clear all those trees?
Did you go past the closed bridge at Bear Creek?
We”re planning to head up that way soon, and would appreciate any additional road news you have.
Thanks
Tom
Hello, can you please post some more information on this topic? I would like to read more.
The trees are still there. We didn”t explore beyond them because night was falling and we needed to setup camp. We saw two or three groups of climbers heading beyond them.