Cedar Butte

25 February 2011

After an 8-10-inch snowfall and below-freezing temperatures for two days in North Bend, the skies cleared. C.J. and I decided to try a local hike/ski/snowshoe trip along the Iron Horse rails-to-trails State Park from Rattlesnake Lake at Cedar Falls.


We began with a ski on the well-traveled railroad grade, meeting only one skier who was returning from the east. Most of the tracks must have been made by foot travelers from the previous day. We passed a group of volunteers who were grubbing out scotch broom for a springtime Greenway celebration. Of course most of the weeds were buried in the foot of (very cold) snow.


When we reached the Cedar Butte trailhead in a mile, we found that no one had been there before us. The route started off steep enough that we removed our skis right away and buried them in snow about 100 ft up the trail and donned our snowshoes. Right away we began to run into the most serious obstacle to our passage: the weight of the snow had bent over many of the hemlock and other saplings and blocked the trail. It was a tiring...and snowy... job to clear the trail every hundred feet or so.



Eventually we got into older forest and no longer had snow-laden saplings to deal with. However, the trail was indistinct at times and we were glad to get onto steeper slopes where the switchbacks were obvious. We had already passed a viewpoint for the Boxley Blowout just before a relatively level stretch, and then we descended to the Saddle Junction.

Although the sign indicates "southside", we did not see a trail heading that way and climbed the last of the 900 ft elevation gain to summit.






About halfway up we found an overlook to Rattlesnake Ledges and the lake. It was a good spot to stop for lunch since it was already nearly 1400 - this half-mile hike had seemed more like a mile-and-a-half.





It was good to spot the bright blue sky through the trees as we approached the summit. A gap in the trees gave us a view to the north right up the Middle Fork of the Snoqualmie with Mts Si and Tenerife on the left and with Mailbox on the right.


The temperature had stayed below freezing the whole day and we were ready to head down as soon as we took the traditional summit photo.

Since we had removed the worst of the tangles on the way up, the trip down took only a half hour, one-third of the time to make the ascent. We were home and recuper- ating by 1700.


Note: We parked round 1100 in the unplowed Iron Horse SP parking lot and then found out that it was supposedly a SnoPark with a fee (daily, $20!). I moved the car a few hundred feet west to the Rattlesnake Lake parking lot which has no parking fee. The summit of Cedar is about 1880 ft with an ascent of 900 ft according to Dan Nelson's guidebook.