This afternoon, I was coming back from the Coast (also known as Western Washington) in my Geo Tracker wagon and due to traffic, I wasn’t able to make it past the construction on I-90 at Snoqualmie Pass by 6:00 PM (the time it gets closed down for blasting during the week). My choice was to either sit in traffic and wait with everybody else, or go exploring.
So just before dusk, I got off I-90 at the Gold Creek/Hyak exit and headed east on NF-4832. 4832 parallels the freeway for a short distance before it begins to climb out of the valley. Since I had my Magellan GPS set to take back home to Ellensburg, it wanted me to turn around at the Gold Creek trailhead. Traffic was still stopped on I-90, so I continued. By this time the GPS recalculated a new route, a little over eight miles to the Kachess Lake Road.
FR-4832 switchbacks out of the valley on a well maintained gravel road until passes a small lake in which my GPS called Resort Creek Pond. It was nearly dark when I stopped at the lake at captured the above image on my iPhone. I knew I should have brought my camera with me.
From the lake, FR-4832 slowly winds down to Kachess Lake Road. I can’t tell you if there is any good views or not because it was dark by then. On the way down, I passed two other vehicles who probably had the same idea as I did.
With this little 10 mile backroad bypass, I drove a road I never traveled before, and found some new areas to explore. It’s also nice to know a route around the I-90 blasting if I get stuck in that again (as long as there is no snow of course).
