Ride description, overview map and elevation profile

The Iron Horse State Park

In August 2016 our group of eight cycled from Ellensburg, Washington to Gas Works Park on Lake Union, north of downtown Seattle.

We spent four days on the trail, leaving Ellensburg at 7:30 on a Tuesday morning and arriving in Seattle on Friday afternoon at about 2:30 with overnight stops in Easton, North Bend and Redmond.

Ninety-five percent of our ride was on seven recreational trails with surfaces that varied from loose gravel and dirt, to pavement. There were five tunnels—including the 2.3 mile (3.7 kilometer) long Snoqualmie Tunnel. Five percent of our ride required us to ride on roads and community hiking trails to bridge a gap between two of our major recreational trails.

We passed through the dry grasslands around Ellensburg (where the temperature hit 95 degrees Fahrenheit—35 Celcius) to the pine forests of the Cascade Mountains' eastern slope and the denser fir woods of the western slope, where we expected cooler temperatures but were hit with record-setting high temperatures in the 90s all the way to Seattle. Only the Snoqualmie Tunnel offered any relief as we pedalled into a wall of cold air emanating from the Hyak entrance.

Most of our first two days of riding was on the John Wayne Pioneer Trail, the rail bed of the former Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul & Pacific Railroad that runs east-west across two-thirds of Washington State. The trail is also informally known as the Iron Horse Trail because the linear Iron Horse State Park forms a 100 foot wide buffer around the John Wayne Pioneer Trail from the Columbia River to Cedar Falls near Rattlesnake Lake. Since it's managed as a state park it's in better shape than the unmanaged sections, and it has improvements such as upgraded bridge decks and railings, and trailside toilets. Although we left the John Wayne Pioneer Trail near the end of day two we've dubbed our entire ride The Iron Horse Trail ride.

From the John Wayne Pioneer Trail we turned onto the Snoqualmie Valley Trail at Rattlesnake Lake and descended to our motel in North Bend, the next day returning to the trail for a few kilometers to its termination point on a railway trestle high above Reinig Road. We schlepped our bikes, one at a time, down a set of stairs to the road below and crossed the 6 mile (9.5 kilometer) gap between the Snoqualmie Valley Trail and the Preston-Snoqualmie Trail on rural roads and streets around Snoqualmie Falls and the Snoqualmie Ridge subdivision, ending our diversion on two hiker-biker trails.

After descending the steep and muddy Deep Creek Trail from Snoqualmie Ridge, the Preston-Snoqualmie Trail appeared before us under a canopy of tall trees, dappled with sunlight; an incongruous sight in the middle of a forest: a smooth paved trail with mown grass shoulders. After a few kilometers we reached the deep cutting of the Preston-Fall City Road, once crossed by trestle, now a series of gravel switchbacks that we necessarily walked down. On the far side of the road the paved trail resumes, climbing steeply at first then at a gentler grade all the way to Preston.

The Issaquah-Preston Trail begins as a separate paved trail (at the Preston end) then becomes a wide bike lane on SE High Point Way before separating again, this time unpaved, through the forest above Interstate 90. At the first freeway exit outside Issaquah the trail splits and the Issaquah-Preston Trail veers right (unsigned), passing beneath Highlands Drive and descending a long hill into Issaquah's outer sprawl, ending at a T-junction with the East Lake Sammamish Trail.

The East Lake Sammamish Trail is paved at the south and north ends, but the middle section that threads a narrow strip of land between expensive waterfront homes and East Lake Sammamish Parkway, is gravel; its future as a fully-paved trail delayed by an ongoing legal battle brought on by the wealthy residents who don't want the trail widened and paved. It's a flat trail and ends literally at our third overnight stop—the Redmond Inn.

The next morning we followed the trail back south for a kilometer and turned onto the Marymoor Connector Trail, across the vast Marymoor Park—our return to urban life heralded by an impatient driver who honked at us for taking too long in a crosswalk—to the west side of Redmond where we turned onto the lovely Sammamish River Trail and headed north through the wide, green valley towards Woodinville. All too quickly we were there, then at Bothell where we joined the Burke-Gilman Trail. After a brief stop to jump into Lake Washington we continued down the west side of the lake, through the university to Gas Works Park and climbed Kite Hill for our official finish.

The Route - Start: Kiwanis Park, Ellensburg. Finish: Gas Works Park, Seattle. Total distance: about 229 kilometers (142 miles). Map courtesy of Google.