Mileage: .5-16 miles multi-use trail system
Elevation Gain: 200 ft
Map: Kiosks on trail or HERE
My favorite places to stop post hike with friends are: Grilla Bites, Route 2 Taproom and Grazing Place, Good Brewing Company, or just Pack A Cooler. You can learn more about these places in my Must Hike Must Eat Eating Out Guide.
Find out current conditions and as always, practice Leave No Trace. Pretty Please.
Hike Details:
Lord Hill Regional Park is a trail system between the towns of Snohomish and Monroe in rural Snohomish County that offers multi-use trails through a variety of terrain. There are well over 6 miles of paths on the 1,463 acre park and time spent wandering offers the possibilities of wildlife viewing and panoramic horizons of the Cascade and Olympic Mountains.
The main entrance sits off the Old Snohomish-Monroe Road, up 127th St. and offers a privy. The equestrian parking lot is next door. Another lower entrance is available along Tester Road near the Monroe High School.
My trip reports:
2/2/2020 My GAIA
You won’t be able to get to Lord Hill Regional Park from Snohomish today. And the lower parking lot is a lake. I’ll be back with more from the upper parking lot via Monroe. Sorry those early morning pictures are so blurry!
I managed to make it to the upper parking lot via Monroe and arrived to an empty lot. The trails were in fairly good condition considering the wind we had and a nice coating of ice pellets on the wood puncheons made for appreciated traction.
I took a few side trails to catch the Main and connect with Pipeline rather than just staying on Pipeline the whole time. Most of the mud was expected but not as bad as it could have been.
And there was SUN!!!!!! Glorious sun streaming through moss covered branches and a blue sky above.
With the rerouting on the way to the park, I was only able to get two rounds on the steep hill at the end of Pipeline in before having to turn around. Thankfully the Pipeline has a few ups and downs to compensate. A handful of folks were headed in when I arrived back at the parking lot but far less than normal for a Sunday morning.
PS: the road closed sign is from Lincoln St shortly after turning off of 2nd. If you know the area, you know that water must get pretty deep to be up at the level it is in the picture!
I decided this week to not take my chances that the lower parking lot would not be open at 7am and just drove to the main parking lot off 127th. There was one other vehicle and another pulled up as I was getting my shoes on. Sunrise had not quite arrived so I grabbed a headlamp and started out a little after 7am.
I only needed my headlamp for the beginning before the trail splits and the trees open up. The boardwalks were slick, two of them still covered with snow. My destination was the steep hill on the backside and I opted for Pipeline thinking it would be the most direct.
Now that most of the snow has melted, there is a TON of mud everywhere. Mud and more mud. Did I say mud? Good slippery fun. Like the previous report states, there are a fair amount of branches and a few trees down across the trail. It would be a good idea to keep an eye out for dangling limbs, there were plenty of squeaky sounds as I walked along and it wasn’t even that windy!
It took me about 45 minutes (2.17 miles) to reach the far side and 45 minutes to do 5 ups/down on the hill which had a strange patch of snow like someone had cleared part of the hill? Anyway, despite the snow last week, the hill was in better shape than last Sunday as far as mud patches, I didn’t have much to avoid going down.
Another 45 minutes and I was back to the car for a total of 2.25 hours and 5.75 miles. The lot was full with other early morning adventurers!
5/12/2018 My GAIA
A dry day at Lord Hill Regional Park! Between several trips to Colorado and one to the Southwest in the past few months, there’s only really been time for visiting some of my closest trail friends to stay in shape. If you are looking for a less crowded hill to climb than say, something on I-90, and you don’t want to drive all the way to the Index Town Wall, give Lord Hill a shot. Lord Hill, you say? Isn’t that just a bunch of meandering trails on a hill?
Well, head over to the backside (the parking lot at the end of Old Tester past Monroe High school). From the parking lot you can gain about 375ft in less than 1/2 mile. It doesn’t sound like much but the last 175ft of that climb just 1/10 of a mile. Go through the gate, head up the road and when it nears the top after the cement barricades take a short trail to the right and up the hill. Don’t worry if you miss it, the road, also continues to the hill. Just look for it on the right.
After reaching 400ft, you can continue on into the park, go up and down a few times or make a right on the trail and loop back down to the bottom of the 175ft hill and make it a circuit.
9/22/2017 My GAIA
Fall has come to Lord Hill Regional Park and it was refreshing to walk the colorful trails before the rains return. I know that more trails have been added since I was here last and signage has not caught up but it is kind of fun to wonder aimlessly and discover the little handmade signs that the locals have used before more formal and uniform ones were added. Who knows were you will end up? Despite about 15 cars in the parking lot I only saw one other person once I turned off the trail that runs from the parking lot, a biker I crossed paths with more than once. I visited the east side with English and Beaver Ponds, which seemed a bit low but I imagine they’ll be full again soon with the promise of a La Niña winter.
3/3/2017 My GAIA
I visited the park recently, and once again it was a wet, muddy day. I wrote up a little post you can read here: Rain, Mud and Logging History on Lord Hill.
10/16/2016
It was a wonderful, wet day in the Pacific Northwest. Lord Hill Regional Park is one of my go-to hikes when I don’t want to drive far or the weather means less than open views. This hike has a little bit of everything, from wide open trail to “homemade” bike paths that feel like you are deep in the woods.
On a clear day there are viewpoints of the Cascades and Olympic Mountains. Most of the trails have very little elevation gain but you can find a few spots to get the heart rate going. There are so many interweaving paths here you could wander for hours on the almost 1500 acres and 6 official miles of trail plus the unofficial ones made by the biking community.
I spent 5 hours once while training for the PCT in 2013. This trail is open to bikes and horses (although I rarely see them) and the occasional race. It was nice to see last time that they have started marking the bike paths with trail markers instead of the little plastic covered tags. All the major junctions have a map kiosk.
12921 150th St. SE
Snohomish, WA 98290
Directions: You can find the park via Snohomish or Monroe on the Old Snohomish-Monroe Road. There is also a parking lot at the end of Tester Rd. past Monroe High School. You can find this detailed map HERE. No parking pass is required, the park is open 7am to dusk.
You can find more information on the park HERE.
Visit my Snohomish County page for more hikes in the area!
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