Teneriffe trailhead parking project, scheduled to be complete July 1, will ease parking burden on Mount Si Road

More parking and new trail connections around Mount Si and Mount Teneriffe will be ready for summer hikers when the Mount Teneriffe trailhead and various trail connection projects are completed this July. The projects are led and funded by the Washington State Department of Natural Resources (DNR) to prepare for the increased numbers of hikers the area sees in the summer.

With an anticipated opening day of July 1, the DNR is working on a Mount Teneriffe Trailhead to provide parking for people coming to use the trails on SE Mount Si Road in unincorporated North Bend. The projects include a parking area with a connecting trail to Mount Teneriffe Trail, and other connections to nearby trails.

Those projects, which are all within the Mount Si Natural Resources Conservation Area (NRCA), are only a few of the developments being funded by the $2.3 million the DNR received from legislature for the 2015-2017 biennium. Katie Woolsey, natural areas manager for the DNR, said the funding covers projects outlined in the Snoqualmie Corridor Recreation Plan, a 10-15 year recreation plan for the DNR managed land.

Those projects include two trailheads, renovation of four day-use sites on the riverside, renovation and construction of 15 miles of new trials, and six trail bridge installations in the Mount Si and Middle Fork Snoqualmie NRCAs.

The plan to develop a Mount Teneriffe trailhead parking area came about not only to improve access to the trail system, but also to reduce the illegal parking along SE Mount Si Road that can affect nearby residents and school bus routes.

“Luckily we have funding for a Mount Teneriffe trailhead so people can park there, because they’ve just been parking near the forest road gate near the school bus turnaround. It’s been causing a lot of conflict with neighbors,” Woolsey said. “During this time last spring, a lot of folks were really concerned about parking, that’s the number one thing.”

Because of the area’s popular trails, illegal parking along the side of SE Mount Si Road is common in the spring and summer months, Woolsey said. To help address the issue while the new trailhead is constructed, DNR’s 12 law enforcement officers were granted ticketing and towing authority by King County in 2016.

“Sheriff Urquhart of King County gave our DNR law enforcement officers enforcement authority to tow vehicles. Our officers could only write Discover Pass tickets before they were deputized with (King County)… we have 12 officers state-wide and all of them got deputized. After a year, Sheriff Urquhart said he would reevaluate it and see if he wanted to extend it,” she said.

“It was something that DNR was trying to do forever because our law enforcement officers are deputized in all of the counties except for King County and one other.”

Once the trailhead is complete, Woolsey hopes to see most of the parking issues solved. While the trailhead location is not in the same spot as the beginning of the trail, the DNR is also constructing a connecting route from the parking area to the Mount Teneriffe trail. The connection will be one of many connecting routes in the Mount Si NRCA finished for July 1.

Connecting the parking area to the trail itself will prevent visitors from walking along the road to the beginning of the trail, Woolsey said. Because the Teneriffe trailhead is close to the Mount Si trailhead, people using the Teneriffe parking as overflow for the Mount Si trail is also a concern. To address that, the DNR will also have two connecting trails ready by July 1. A connection between Boulder Garden Loop Trail and Mount Si Trail and a connection between Talus Loop Trail and Mount Teneriffe Trail.

Woolsey also said King County and Si View Metropolitan Park District are working to have appropriate signs along the Snoqualmie Valley Trail to connect people to the trail system, and to downtown North Bend.

“This is the busiest landscape that DNR has in terms of visitation so it is really wonderful that we have funding for a lot of our projects,” she said.

“We’ve anticipated 10 to 15 years, but we’ve implemented the first priority steps within these two years and its pretty rare that that happens.”