The Washington State Hiking Podcast
Welcome to the The Washington State Hiking Podcast with your host, Jennie Thwing Flaming. Along with part time co-host and guidebook author Craig Romano, she provides practical and timely seasonal hiking advice for hikers, trail runners and potential hikers of all skill and ability levels that is practical, accurate, fun and inclusive. We cover hikes near Seattle and Tacoma as well as hikes all across Washington from the rain forests of the Olympic Peninsula to the Shrub Steppe of Eastern Washington.
Jennie is a middle aged, plus sized, frequently solo slow hiker and a born and raised Washingtonian and has enjoyed Washington's trails her entire life. Craig is a trail runner and ultra marathoner who also loves the mellow walk close to home. Originally from New Hampshire, he has made his home in Washington for more than 30 years. He the author of more than 20 guidebooks covering trails across Washington State and beyond.
The Washington State Hiking Podcast
More than Lake 22 - Lake, Forest and River hikes in Snohomish County
Text us your questions to answer on a future episode
Jennie and Craig talk about their favorite lowland hikes to lakes, waterfalls and along rivers and forests in Snohomish County.
Our sponsor for the month of April is Snohomish County Tourism. Thank you!
Listen to Snohomish County Placemakers wherever you get your podcasts
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Jennie’s hike planner and Seattle seasonal hiking guide
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Jennie, welcome to the Washington State hiking podcast. I'm your host. Jennie Thwing Flaming,
Craig Romano:and I'm your co host. Craig Romano, Craig
Jennie Flaming:and I are happy to have you here. We provide practical and timely, seasonal hiking advice for hikers, trail runners and potential hikers and trail runners of all skill and ability levels that is helpful, accurate, fun and inclusive. Hi everyone. This is the third and final episode in this three part series about awesome hikes in Snohomish County. Thank you so much to Snohomish County tourism for sponsoring the Washington State hiking podcast for the month of April. All right, Craig, well, this is the last of our three part series about awesome Snohomish County hikes, and thanks again to our sponsor, Snohomish County tourism for sponsoring us for the month of April, that is so wonderful. And just want to mention again that they also have a wonderful podcast called Snohomish County place makers that Craig and I were recently guests on, and they came on to our show a couple weeks ago. So this has been a really fun collaboration. So we
Craig Romano:really want to emphasize, too, the accessibility of the hikes in Snohomish County, especially if you live in the Seattle area. Yeah, really close. And also, you know when you're coming back for your opera, opera hike, you know, your post hike, lots of great places definitely support a local business. Yes, you know, getting espresso, brewpub dinner, all kinds of options you can find on their website. So yeah, definitely.
Jennie Flaming:Two weeks ago, in our episode, we talked about some of those, some of those favorites as well. So cool. So Craig today, to kind of wrap this up, we're talking about lowland hikes. So last week, we talked about mountains. Two weeks ago, we talked with Richard and Nick about some of their favorites, and some food and drink and lodging places and some urban hikes. So today we're really talking about kind of rivers, forests, more low land hikes. And so I'd love to know what are some of your favorites?
Craig Romano:Yeah, let's, let's emphasize too. Jennie, this is a perfect segue on this, our episode about the high country. You can't get to a lot of those places right now. It's still winter up there. So this, you know, put, make your notes where you want, where you want to hike a couple months from now. This is where you what we're going to talk about today is where you can, you can go out today, right now, right after you finish, if you're driving to the trailhead right now. So, you know, the western part of the county is definitely more urbanized, so that's where you're going to have some great urban, urban trails, close to town, a lot of places that it's perfect for going for a walk and then stopping in at your favorite brew pub or or cafe. So in, you know, right, right in, in Everett. I know, I know Nick had talked about some of his favorite hikes, the the mill town, which is right in the heart of the city, a great place, but right outside. I mean, in the city limits, still in the city, it's going to feel very, very different, the langus riverfront and the Spencer Island, which is in the in the Snohomish River Delta, and that's what this is kind of a cool place. I mean, you got the highway there, so you get the highway noise, so you can block that out. You can hike in this area, in the Delta, and when it's foggy, you're going to feel like you're in the South. You're going to feel like you're down in Louisiana. Except, I mean, it's not no magnolia trees or alligators, but it has that, that that buy you feeling when sun comes out and it does come out in every it does. You're going to have that those bottlenecks. And you can see Mount Rainier across the way, and realize, sorry, I'm not Louisiana. In mount Pilchuck, you'll see across the way this, and it's great for burning. It's actually, it's one of the best burning hot spots in the Puget Sound area, the the langus riverfront part is paved, so that's a paved trail. You can do that. And then you, you cross onto the island on an old Jackknife bridge that was brought in from a different area. So that's been, it's a historic bridge. And then you can hike. You can hike on, on, on these, on the Delta, in the delta. So, so really cool place.
Jennie Flaming:So this is just to sort of review for everyone, because I bet most people are not familiar with this at all. This is in the city of Everett, along, sort of at the delta of the Snohomish river. So the Snohomish river flows down from the mountains and out through Snohomish Surprise, surprise, and around the city of Everett and then out there. So just wanted to sort of center that for folks where we're actually talking about,
Craig Romano:you know, and why we're talking about so here's a little factoid you may or may not know, the Snohomish river itself is actually pretty sure. Pretty short. It's formed by the sky com ish, you know, and the Snoqualmie. And so where those rivers with the confluence, then you've got the Snohomish and so perfect segue. Right below that, that area, you've got a couple of great places to hike. First of all, I got Lord Hill, which is, which is Snohomish County's largest county park. I think it's about 415, 100 acres, miles and miles of trails, about 20 miles of real good trails. And then there's, there's more primitive trails. I love it for running a lot of the old roads in there. It's great for taking kids. There's some there's some small ponds, and there's some wetlands. There are actually some few areas too, even though it's mostly forested. But there are a few, few areas where you get views out across the confluence of the river and out towards Mount Rainier. This is a great place. It's right between the town of Snohomish and Monroe. Wonderful, wonderful park. If you've never been there, you can, you can actually mountain bike there. You can horseback ride there to Great Park. But along the river on the other side, this is always a mouthful. There's the the mount airman, the Bob airman, the full. It's by the Bob airman wetland area. I gotta look at the full. The full thing is the confluence of Thomas Eddie. It's a long name. It's called, we'll call it the Bob airman Park, uh, who was Bob airman? He was, he was a duck hunter, um, and this was an area on the river. That
Jennie Flaming:was an Army still talking about the Snohomish River.
Craig Romano:We're right on. We're on the snow. We're literally on the Snohomish river. So this, this is an and Lord Hill is on, is on the north side of the river. In the airman Park is on the south side of the river. And this was a quarry at one point, and it has these beautiful oxbow lakes. They're the wintertime swans winter down here. But this is baffles me that I believe in the 1970s somebody wants to put a housing development in here. First of all, it's just insane, because it's on a flood plain. It's absolutely ridiculous. But mister airman led the the cost to protect this area because it's incredible wildlife habitat. So this is a place you could check out a totally different mood of the river. Hiking here. Great bird watching. So check this place out too. This is you access this from Snohomish on the south side of the river. So that's a great place too. Again, you know, going upriver a little more now we're actually going to be on the sky COVID River, because we're north of Monroe, one of my favorite places for local easier close close to the city. Place are the Osprey trails in Sultan it's a whole network of trails here. And there's bridges that go over. And this is an area that was mitigated when, when the dam at Spada Lake, which is Everett's water watershed. Now Water Drinking water was being reauthorized and all that they they enhanced some some wildlife habitat down below for salmon. So it's a great place to see a spawning salmon. Lots of channels. You can walk on these bridges. Kids will absolutely love it. So that's a really cool place. Wow.
Jennie Flaming:Yeah, yeah. Love it. Those are wonderful suggestions. One of the ones that comes to mind for me, which I'm not going to talk about a lot right now, teaser is because Marissa, who's going to be our guest next week, when we're talking about hiking with kids. She talks about this hike a little more, but meadowdale Beach Park, which is kind of there in kind of between Edmonds and Mukilteo, that's a great, great trail, but we'll talk more about that
Craig Romano:next week. That's a great one. And, and I don't Yeah, other areas for kids and local in that region too. You know, right in busy Lynwood, if you've never taken the time, is scriber lake in that area, and it's a little park, but there's actually with scriber Brook, there's a paved trail so you can walk farther, but it's got a floating bridge. It's a floating bridge, and that's a great place. I remember when I was working in the research in my urban trails, every book, taking my son there, really like that place. Yeah. And then right in Edmonds too, there's not major hikes along the water. It's a wonderful waterfront, but it's, you know, you have the marsh there, and you can walk. You can walk kind of a paid path around the marsh. That's really nice. And then Yost Park. Yost Park is a really nice place, yeah, to you can walk a couple miles in there too. And a lot of people outside of Edmonds aren't aware of it because it's kind of tucked in there a little Yes, that's a nice place.
Jennie Flaming:People who know Yoast Park would know it for its outdoor swimming pool. Oh yeah, but there are really cool trails and forestry as well. You
Craig Romano:can do a couple miles in there easily as well. So again, this is right in the urban areas. Again, right on the on the edge of of of the urban pact. So this is going more towards outside of Bothell, towards Monroe, is para is paradise, Paradise Valley Paradise Valley Park. Yup, that's another, really. Really, it's a large park. It's, it's well over 1000 acres. Halfway hasn't been developed yet, but there's, I think there's well over 10 miles of trails there. It's pretty gentle terrain. So it's, again, it's great for kids. It's great for running. This is near Maltby, over in that area. This, this is another really nice place. If you just got a couple hours, you need to get out, want to do some walk, you can, you could easily spend, you know, half a day or more there. Well, it's trails. So these are all good ones you can do right now. Now you want to go a little bit farther into, into the back country, along rivers. Okay, I'm going to, I'm going to send you to Granite Falls and over, over in this area is the lime kiln trail, yes, which is a wonderful, wonderful trail. If you're history, it's you're going to hike down on the original railroad that connected Everett to the ghost town Monte Cristo that I talked about later. And this, this, this railroads, amazing, built on in this canyon along, you know, this river valley. Brutal, hard work, most of it, you know, hard immigrant labor, putting this together. And then you'll get to a restored lime kiln. One of the, one of the these should be these lime kilns all over the place out here, and there's a handful that are still left. It's a great one out in the San Juan Islands. This is one of the great ones here too. You can check this out. And unfortunately, I've been hiking this area for about 25 years. A lot of the artifacts in the air have disappeared. People have taken stuff. Please don't do that. This is part of part of our heritage. There used to be all kinds of saw blades and bricks, you know, in bed, but a lot of that stuff has disappeared. Imagine that. It's really sad. This is part of our heritage, and it's really cool to see this stuff out here. So this is about a seven mile hike you can do to go down there. You kind of start up through some old cut, old forest, everything you drop down into the canyon. There's old growth, spectacular hike that's usually accessible year round. Yep.
Jennie Flaming:Our sponsor for the month of April is Snohomish County Tourism woven into the fabric and landscape of Snohomish County, Washington are 1400 plus square miles of forest land. This means plenty of space to hike or ride a bike or a horse on a nationally award winning trail or camp in a forested campground or a sweeping meadow. You might even find yourself spending the night with your closest friends in a yurt or picnicking at the crest of a natural waterfall with your family, wherever adventure takes you in Snohomish County, chances are you won't be short on opportunities to capture great photos and even better memories, speaking of which, the national parks, forests and public lands in and around Snohomish County are some of the most beautiful places to explore, and they need our care for more information on how you can recreate responsibly, Leave No Trace and protect our natural resources. Visit Seattle North country.com you can also follow Seattle North Country on social media. At Seattle North Country, that's one word, no space, spaces, dashes or hyphens. You can also tag Seattle north country or use the hashtag visit snow co to get your snow co adventures featured on their social accounts. Thank you. Visit Snohomish County now back to the show.
Craig Romano:Yeah, Jennie, you have some. I have more. So if you you uncrimed. Well,
Jennie Flaming:um, lime kiln was actually one of the biggest ones that I wanted to talk about, and you already did. So I think the only thing I would add to what you said about lime kiln, Craig, is that it's not super steep, right? So, you know, because it's on a railroad bed, so that makes sense, um, but it's a place where you can go quite a distance, um, without too much climbing. And personally, I love that for a rainy day, because doing a lot of uphill when I'm wearing a rain jacket. I don't like that. So I love trails like this, where you can get some distance in and be kind of out there, but also there's not a lot of climbing. It's really nice, if
Craig Romano:you like that. And rail trails, another wonderful place for running or for walk is the white horse trail. And the white horse Trail is a rail trail that connects to the Centennial Trail in Arlington, yeah, all the way to Darrington. Unfortunately, the section, there is one section outside Arlington that was damaged by the landslides. That's not open, but the but the majority of the trail is and some of the best parts of the trail are towards Darington. As far as for our scenery, you'll go along. Let me get to try this North Fork of the stillwamish? Yep, North Fork of the stillwamish. You'll also very, very moving. You'll go through the Oso landslide area, the memorial there where, boy, I'm losing track of the time, it's been 10 years,
Jennie Flaming:hasn't it? Yeah, I think it's been maybe 11.
Craig Romano:Yeah. I think that's right when I remember, matter of fact, it's chilling, because this when I was working for green trails, I was visiting my retailers, and I was in Darrington talking people. I drove out the day after I drove back from Darrington on that spot, the mountain slid out. I think, Oh, my God, that it was just, it was, it was a powder keg just waiting to go. Yeah? I think 53 people lost their lives in this thing that, yeah, entire side of the mountain came down, blocked. It's just insane, yeah? So when you see this now, of course, plants are starting to recolonize the area, but when it first happened, it looked like Mount St Helens. It looked like it were had blown. So the trail has been, has been really built nicely in there. It's paved in the in that section. And you can see the memorial in there. If you continue after Darrington, you can go by the old Fortson mill, which is used to be a town in there. It's, it's no longer there. There's mill ponds, beautiful views of of the Finney block in of white horse. Great area again, for, for a spring walk, for a mountain bike, for a run, check that out. And then outside of Darrington itself, up the mountain loop high, which is a couple miles on a paved section, is the Sauk River Trail, which is another wonderful year round trail. There's usually Eagles there in the winter time in the fall, there actually is a wheelchair accessible section. A small loop on there could be a little rough, depending on how the maintenance is. This another one, about seven miles you can spend there. I've been in there many, many times. It never gets never gets tired. It's a great one for kids. So these are all great River Trails and close to the city trails that you can do right now.
Jennie Flaming:Yeah, absolutely, pretty much all year. Okay, I have one more to talk about before we wrap up. But before we do that, are there any others you want to mention? Craig,
Craig Romano:um, you know, I'm feeling, oh yes, of course, river Meadow Park in Arlington, where the where the two forks of the still aquamish meet, and this is in my urban trails. Every book wonderful, wonderful park is camping there still. Guam ish, they do the salmon fest. I've gone to one of their events. They're really, really cool. This is a wonderful, wonderful park. And many, many miles of trails there too. So if you don't, it's a lot of people don't, aren't aware of it. Yeah, it's kind of off. You're off the main roads, but it's paved, good roads to get there. Yes. So this, this is a good, a good place to check out as well. Yeah, okay, what's the one I miss? Oh, what's the one you did? I missed this one? Do you guys?
Jennie Flaming:No, you'd never miss this one. So you know how we said, you know, we have the places that we don't name because they're too famous and annoying. Okay, this one I actually love, even though it's very popular. Oh, boy, do you want to guess it, and
Unknown:this is a low country Yes, oh, Wallace falls, yes, of course, of course.
Jennie Flaming:So, okay, here's the thing about Wallace. Walls I know it is, and I know we said, you know, part of the purpose of these episodes is to get beyond these really famous and really crowded hikes and and, you know, there's no planet where Wallace follows is not that hike. However, it's wonderful. I know you love it too. I think you know, if it is a weekend, oh yeah, it's gonna, you're not gonna be able to find parking. And again, like we talked about in our last episode, and we probably will talk about a lot this year, and maybe every year, is that if there's no parking, there's no parking, right? So I know. So last week, I talked about if you do go to these hikes going in the evening, and you said or early in the morning, but I'm gonna tell you that at 6am these like popular hikes, are already crowded, but at 4pm they are not, and at 6pm they are definitely not. So I have found the evening hike is a better crowd, void avoiding way than early in the morning, you know, unless we're talking really early in the morning, like five, you know. But I think sometimes we'll think, Oh, I'll get there at seven and it won't be as crowded. No, it's bananas at seven, seven. So anyway, I would recommend, first of all, Wallace falls amazing year round hike. Um, this last winter, it was really damaged by the bomb cyclone that we had in November, but they have repaired the trail. And, I mean, it's amazing what Washington State Parks has done to get that trail back open and safe so quickly. So I just, you know, the waterfalls there are beautiful. It's a it's a great. Hike for visitors. I mean, yes, it's very busy, but if you're there like this time of year, in the spring, it's still busy, but not as busy. Or if you go in the evening or on a weekday in the summer or in January, I don't know. There's also many other hikes there. You know, you can go like up to the lake. And that also a
Craig Romano:lot less. And the other thing too, and I every time I've done Wallace falls, and it's been quite a bit, because I really do like, like the hike, yeah, I usually go there in the winter time. It's a great time for two reasons, a lot less people. Plus the falls are that much more spectacular because of all the water I have connected Wallace falls to Wallace Lake. You could do a long hike that way. You can go beyond Wallace Lake to J Lake, and you're going to see nobody up there at J Lake. You can actually camp at you need to get a permit through state parks. There's actually back country camping there, um, the Greg ball trail that goes up there, the old Railroad Trail, yeah, goes around because a lot of people just go in and out the same, the woody trail, the popular one, but there are you can. You can actually even on a busy day hike trails that aren't going to be as busy. It is a state park. Make sure you have a discover pass. Make sure your dogs unleash so but it is a fantastic it is definitely one of our best parks, and there's no reason why you shouldn't when I moved to the area back in the June of 1989 I had already been I, that's one of the first places I had to check out. And it was busy back then too, but, but, but it's a great place. Yeah, yeah.
Jennie Flaming:I Yeah. Well, on that note, we are wrapping up our three episode series about Snohomish County, and so this has been really fun to do this deep dive into one location, and I'm looking forward to doing more of this in the future. Absolutely. Yeah. So thank you Snohomish County tourism for sponsoring the month of April, and we will see you all next on
Craig Romano:the trails, yeah, yeah, you.
