Mailbox Peak - Old Trail — Sunday, Sep. 8, 2002

Snoqualmie Region > North Bend Area

Take Exit 34 off I-90, turn right onto SE Middle Fork Rd and continue on until the road turns to gravel. Parking is immediately before the road turns to gravel, and trail starts as another gated logging road on the right. The first logging road indicated on the Green Trails Map 206S to the left did not appear visible to us. Once you pass over a creek that feeds under the road take the unmarked trail to the left. We accidentally continued on for a bit as we weren’t sure if this was the trail until we hit the fork in the road (road gets quite overgrown at this point) and turned back to access the trail once we realized we’d gone too far. Once on the trail, you pass over a clear-cut area with a few mosquitoes and follow the creek up for a small bit and then get ready for an advanced version of Tiger Mountain’s cable trail. The trail is in pretty good shape most of the way up but it is steep so poles are a must. There seem to be some trails that veer off the main trail and then come back on, which was somewhat confusing. Reference points seem hard to come by, it always seems like you are almost at the top. As you near the top you re-enter a bushy section with more mosquitoes and you start to get some great views of Rainier and Snoqualmie Valley. You then hit a rock pile with some more great views including downtown Seattle and I-90 corridor. At the top of the rock pile you can see Mt. Si and the final peak you need to get to in order to reach the top of Mailbox peak (and I guess the newly replaced mailbox). We ended up turning around at this point as it was getting late and we were nervous about how long it would take to get down the steep trail. It turns out you can avoid the rock-pile if you stay on the trail to the left. If you have pets watch out for fleas as our miniature dachshund had two fleas on him, and then he had an even worse experience getting stung by a wasp on the way down, but he survived the ordeal just fine. Going down actually was better than the cable trail at Tiger since there wasn’t all the lose gravel so we made record time. Next time we’ll need to make it all the way to the mailbox. Great workout!