Driving there: This is a tricky one. There are two pipelines, and the wrong one is the easiest to find. Near Duvall WA, at the intersection of Novelty Hill Rd and West Snoqualmie Valley Rd, head north. At 0.5 miles, there's a wide spot on the left side of the road with a wide cleared area going up the hill. I don't know what it is, but it's not the Tolt pipeline. Continue north another 0.4 miles. Look for the Tolt pipeline on the left side. There's not much to see, just a cleared area going up the hill. If you pass a collapsed barn you've gone too far. There's no parking at all. Go back to the first pipeline to park.
We parked at the only place we could on this godforsaken road, and walked north on the narrow West Valley road to the
Tolt pipeline.
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| Skunk Cabbage |
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| I wonder if it tastes as good as it smells? |
It's a kind of a scramble through the bushes up the hill - no trail at all, just mud and blackberries. It's steep, too, but about halfway up the hill we hit the end of the maintained trail and the going improved considerably.
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| Looking east across the West Valley road. |
The
Tolt pipeline is a 100 foot wide right-of-way for a pipe that carries water from the Tolt river to Seattle and the suburbs. It's pretty popular with walkers, joggers, bicyclists, and horses. It tends to be pretty straight, but there are a lot of ups and downs.
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| Are you looking at me? |
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We haven't hiked in 6 weeks, and the hill was steep, so we only made 3 miles today.
