Sunday, August 16th, 2009Cumulative Elevation gain about 300 ft
Trail length covered : 4.5 miles one way
Level of difficulty: Easy
This is a trail on an old railroad grade that used to stretch from Seattle to Chicago. The railway tracks are not there any more and the grade was converted into a gravel pathway in the 1980s. The section between Cedar Falls Close to North Bend on the West side of the Snoqualmie Pass and Vantage near Columbia River to the East of the Pass has since been maintained by the Washington State Parks and named it as John Wayne Trail. The surroundings of the trail is named the Iron Horse Park. It is nice family hiking trail with gentle slope and minimal physical efforts involved.
I and my friend accessed the trail at its starting point located about 3 miles south of exit 32 of the I-90 interstate highway. Its a gently sloping trail with the mountain wall on the south and excellent views on the other. The Rattlesnake Mountain and the Rattlesnake Ledge are visible from near the start of the trail. There is also a nice view of the Little Si and the Big Si together. This view provides a very good idea about the efforts and difficulty associated with the hiking the Big Si compared to that with the Little Si. There were quite a number of bicyclists on the trail. There was even one man riding a battery powered two-wheeler vehicle. Is a motorized vehicle allowed on this trail? I am not sure. However, we soon saw him coming back, but not riding his motorbike but pushing it!
As we walked, the trail moved closer to the Highway. At some point we passed the Twin Falls State Park on our left. At about 4.5 miles, pretty close to the Olallie State Park, we turned around. If we went on for another 16 miles, we would be walking into the 2-miles long Snoqualmie Tunnel. Well, I plan to return to this trail some other day to hike through that tunnel!More pictures
More information on John Wayne Trail
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