Hiked in with my daughter and sister. Nice easy hike. Sign at trailhead announced Marten Creek Bridge is out...we went anyways. Got to Marten Creek, went up to the left to the falls (beautiful) and boulder hopped over to the other side and continued on to Big Creek Falls...very impressive! On the way back we stopped at the Otter Falls/Lipsy Lake turn off, NOT impressive...Otter Falls was barely a trickle...we'll do the hike again in the late spring next year to see those falls. The trail was dry, all of the creeks were dry. Very rocky, no bugs, we enjoyed the hike...nice Sunday afternoon.

Lake Blethen: Taylor River/Quartz Creek UTM 604948E 5269605N

Take exit 34 off I 90 go left under the freeway, past the Truck Plaza to the Middle Fork Road. Turn right and go 9.7 miles to Taylor river bridge at the Y go left for .5 of a mile to a footbridge with a date stamp (1988) Beginning elevation 1,200 feet. Walk along the Taylor River Road .4 of a mile to Quartz Creek Road. Go left and continue to a switchback at 1.9-mile elevation 2150. Continue up and along the road to a gully at 3.43 miles elevation 2750. From this point on the trail is very brushy and hard to follow. There are some orange flags as you get closer to the Lake. The Lake is 4.8 miles one way and the Lake elevation is 3,261 feet. I was on this trail 2 years ago and it was hard to follow then and its worse to day.

Lake Blethen is a beautiful little lake with great scenery, old growth trees beginning 1/2 mile from the lake and lots of huckleberries. There are a couple of good campsites on the far side of the lake. Continue .7 of a mile to Upper Blethen. If you want to make a weekend trip there is Bessermer Mountain 1 mile as the crow flies from Upper Blethen an elevation of 5,100 feet. Very few visitors come to these Lakes. The trail is brushy and hard to follow but it’s worth it. RBrown

Checked out Taylor River road in preparation for trying Nordrum Lake or Marten Lake. It was raining off and on and there are large, slippery (today) rocks on the Taylor Rv road. Most of the original gravel is gone, the larger base rocks are exposed, and the road is passable single file for bikes. Keep the larger rocks in mind if you are planning to bike the road to the trailheads. We're novice mountain bikers and the large, slick, loose rocks had us walking our bikes off and on to the Marten Lake turnoff, about 3 mi in. Sun came out at the decayed bridge near the Marten Lake turnoff (where the trail turned to single track) so we fished the river instead of continuing on the road. Lots of trout in this pretty little river. River is catch and release, lure only. Drier trail on the way back made for better biking. A car at the trailhead had been burgled (smashed rear passenger wing window).

Maybe we should have known. It started raining while we were at the trailhead, getting ready for a quick overnight to Big Creek Falls. My two hiking partners wanted an easy trip (one is rehabbing a knee, the other did Mailbox Peak the day before) and the five-mile trek with 500 feet elevation gain fit the bill.

We piled on our rain jackets, donned our packs, and hit the trail at 12:12pm for a nice walk in the woods. It’s an even, wide trail with a couple of minor stream crossing and a couple major bridges. The trees formed a nice canopy, so the rain gear came off quickly, though the drizzle continued. (We’d be thankful for that later ‘cause it kept the bugs down.)

This is the closest thing I’ve seen to a rain forest east of the Olympic Peninsula. The red of the cedars cast a beautiful tone over the low-lying ferns and berry bushes (now in season), and thick sheets of moss covered many of the trees. Not much in the way of fauna. Heard the whistles of rodents and saw a few birds (wrens, thrush, jays and juncos), otherwise it’s just the trees and streams. At a leisurely pace, we paused at Marten Creek Falls and made our way to Big Creek Falls by 2:30pm only to find no where to camp. Well, there was a wide spot by the trail where someone else had camped, but it wasn’t too enticing.

We decided to hike on to the Nordrum/Snoqualmie Lake junction, another mile down. Still no camping. We split, and scouted ¼ mile down each trail, and found only more wide-spot-in-the-trail camping. I apologized vociferously to my friends for leading them astray, and posited some choices: make it a day hike and turn around now, camp at the wide-spot, and continue up to Snoqualmie Lake. The though of hiki0ng out appealed to no one, and we also encountered our first bugs here. Flies. Swarms of them. Not biting, just annoying. So, to avoid the bugs and ‘cause it was still early, we went on. Though it’s a nice day hike that I could take my father on without worrying about his physical health, Big Creek Falls is little more than a point of entry for backpackers. I’d actually advise day hikers to stop at Martin Creek ‘cause five miles on a river hike is a long way. Sure, it’s easy, but it’s also repetitive. And the concrete monstrosity of a bridge at Big Creek Falls takes away from the beauty of the falls.

For the continuation of this trip see Nuttyjohn’s entry for Snoqualmie Lake with the same date.