Nice and dry, not a lick of snow anywhere. A nice mellow day hike. The falls are really running. Enjoy.

It was a beautiful day on Sunday for an early season hike up along the Taylor River. The road to the trailhead is in pretty bad shape in places, with serious potholes. The trail itself is looking more like a trail and less like an abandoned road, which it is, every year. The bridge over Martin Creek has had some boards added so walkers don't go through the deteriorating bridge deck.

You should definitely take the side trail to Otter Falls, which is an unmarked hole in the brush, about 100 yards past the Lipsky Lake outlet. You can tell which one that is because it still has a very large culvert sitting in the creek, left over from the days when it was a road. It is about 4 relatively flat miles from the trailhead. Big Creek Falls is a half mile further. There is an incredibly substantial concrete road bridge at the falls which makes for a great place to sit and eat lunch while admiring the long cascades of water that are the falls.

Mosquitoes were bad at just two places, the trailhead and at Martin Creek. There was only one large blowdown to crawl over. Otherwise the trail was in good shape.

I headed for the Taylor River hike on suggestion of Kim from Trail Talk. When the line of cars on the Middle Fork Road hit double digits I almost turned back, expecting a mob on the trail, but I was pleasantly surprised at the lack of crowds.

The road is really nasty in places after the pavement ends. Several parts have been recently graded, but there are sections with bone-jarring potholes in large numbers. There were about 15 cars at the trailhead at 10am. I only really saw people on the trail at the major stops, like Marten Creek, etc.

The trail to Marten Lake on my Green Trails map is marked as unmaintained and I certainly agree. Within 50 feet, the trail was imposible to find. Most of the trail I saw has been turned into washouts and there are lots of fallen logs. After 30 minutes, I gave up and returned to the Taylor River Trail.

There are a some major washouts at the first few creeks. Two of them require careful crossing. The water level was higher on the way back, washing out some of the hiker-made bridges. This didn't seem to stop most people, though.

A side boot trail to Otter Falls and Lipsy Lake was marked with piles of stones, a few hundred feet before a concrete bridge over a large creek. Lispy Lake is small, but with Otter Falls cascading down a granite wall behind, it's quite a sight. I spent 15 minutes or so shooting pictures alone before people started showing up, including a polarbear. Actually, it was *the* polarbear from Trail Talk. What are the odds'

We decided to hike the 2 miles to Snoqualmie Lake together, but ran into several large blowdowns about a mile past Otter Falls. Light was fading, so we turned back. By dusk the gnats were starting to get bad, particularly at the trailhead. During the day there were no bugs at all.

A good hike overall, about 12 miles round trip to Snoqualmie Lake (if we had made it that far), and not too crowded considering the proximity to I-90.

You don't need to worry about snow on this one. It's a perfect starter hike for the season -- about 7 miles round trip and only about 900 feet gain. The trail runs along the South Fork of the Snowqualmie river on an old logging road. The 15 mile pothole ridden dirt road to the trailhead is a real suspension killer. The trail is in good shape and the real treat is a 700 foot waterfall ending in a small pond.