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Green River Gorge
With rain steadily falling and the sounds of a rushing stream filling the moss-coated forest, it's easy to see why the Pacific Northwest became the defacto location to resemble other worlds in the Stargate SG-1 series. Far away from city noise and highway traffic, the almost iridescent green coating many of the tree trunks lend an alien feel to the already larger-than-life canopy of conifers towering over the trails below. At every turn blackberry bushes encroach on mucky paths with only an occasional slug on fallen timber to indicate the presence of life on this strange planet.
We picked a rainy Wednesday to visit Flaming Geyser State Park in Green River Gorge, so I only took a couple photos from a dry spot overlooking the bubbling geyser. This is neat spot to take kids on a hike thanks to several different trail options, plenty of access to the river and some educational details about salmon and steelhead trout. In some seasons you can find fish in large numbers swimming the river. For our visit today, the only visible aquatic life was a family of ducks that I think were red-breasted mergansers, but couldn't photograph because of the rain. All were a sort of rusty color with their head feathers fluffed up in a plume, which may have been a result of the rain but is typical of mergansers. It was fun to watch the group swim against the current as they sought shelter under the cover of an overhanging tree.
Flaming Geyser park is named for a 3-foot flame that used to burn continuously from gasses leaking from an old mining tunnel in the park almost 100 years ago. The flame is long gone but the story lives on. Depending on which trail path you select at Flaming Geyser, you can take a leisurely stroll along the river or hike into the forest for 3 miles round trip. There's a short loop through the forest with a footbridge over a stream leading to the geyser and its sulfur runoff. We didn't investigate the site where the Flaming Geyser used to be, but this seems like a good river spot to come back to mid-week in better weather.
The park is almost a straight shot south from Renton on highway 169, about 1 mile outside Black Diamond. A right turn off of 169 onto SE Green Valley Road leads to the park entrance.
Posted by Jake at June 23, 2005 07:05 AM