First bike camping of 2009 -- North Fork Snoqualmie River
Friday after work Andre, Andrew and I biked up the North Fork of the Snoqualmie River searching for camping spots. None of us had been very far up the river before.
The first section of the road is called 5710 and gives you access to Hancock and Calligan Lakes. It's a really nice stretch of road with no traffic and good surface conditions. Beyond that we merge back onto 5700 which is more heavily trafficked (this means a car every hour or two) and looser gravel.
We had a few areas to check for camping in mind. There are two valleys that go into the National Forest, Phillipa Creek and Sunday Creek. We didn't explore Phillipa Creek and Sunday Creek had snow right at the trail head. Across from Sunday Creek was an old road which looked promissing, but it ended at a broken bridge. This would be a decent camp spot most days, but it was a little damp on Friday. We kept heading up the main road until we got stuck in snow at the Lennox Creek turnoff. There was another (loud) group camping here, so we turned back. At this point it was getting dark and we needed to find camp pretty fast. My GPS showed an abandoned road a couple of miles back, so we checked it out.
The road looked like it hadn't been used in a decade or two. It was very overgrown with shrubs and trees, but we pushed our way through. The area by the river was pretty nice and had an open spot for dinner and some good trees for hanging our hammocks. Andrew found a nice soft spot for his bivy. We made a quick dinner, enjoyed a small fire, and went to bed.
The morning air was chilly and after a bit of tea we hit the road and head back to the car. The blue skies of Friday night had been replaced with a low fog. The roads were clear and the slight downhill trend made our ride back a little faster than the one the day before. At 9:30 we reached the car and were heading home.
I like Friday night camping because you still have a full weekend for other stuff too. I look forward to exploring this area more in a month or two when more of the snow has melted. This would have been a great area last year because the bridge which makes it accessible cars had been washed out. Now it is open again and there is more traffic.
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